Hugo Broos
What does the new Bafana Bafana coach bring to the national team and what are his past achievements?
After failing to secure the services of Carlos Queiroz, Pitso Mosimane and Benni McCarthy, the South African Football Association has turned to experienced Belgian tactician Hugo Broos to lead the side for the next five years. The 69-year-old comes with a good reputation and a recent Africa Cup of Nations winners medal under his belt, but just what can South African fans expect from the veteran tactician? KICK OFF’s Nick Said investigates.
Hugo Broos could not hide his delight as he was thrust aloft upon the young shoulders of his Cameroon side in celebration of their shock victory at the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations finals in Gabon.
Cameroon are no strangers to continental success, but this particular squad was given little hope of lifting the trophy and were billed as pre-tournament rank outsiders given their youthfulness and the array of experienced talent they were missing.
But having seen off the hosts in the pool stages and effectively knocked them out in their final group game, Cameroon went on to beat the all-powerful Senegal on penalties in the quarterfinals.
They followed that up with a 2-0 victory over Ghana and then a 2-1 success over much more fancied Egypt in the final in Libreville.
Along the way they had seen off some of the continent’s biggest stars in Sadio Mane, Kalidou Koulibaly, Asamoah Gyan and the Ayew brothers, Andre and Jordan, and the Egyptian sensation Mo Salah.
This run to the trophy was no fluke, Cameroon had done it the hard way by seeing off three of the top sides on the continent, and with a young squad that featured just four players out of 23 over the age of 27, and just one, midfielder Sébastien Siani, over 30.
The decision by Broos to go with younger players was not forced on him, but most certainly by design. He prefers the energy and passion of youth over experience, young legs to execute his well thought out game-plans.
Broos has already stated that his next five years with Bafana Bafana, if he is to last that long, will be a rebuilding job with the immediate aim of injecting youth into the senior national team.
“With the information I have received and analysis I made in the last few weeks‚ I think it’s the moment to build a new team in South Africa‚” Broos said.
“I was a bit surprised when I saw in the selections of the last games that there were so many players who were 30 [years old] or more. So I think we have to rebuild the team, a younger team‚ and take the example of Cameroon.
“I did the same there. When you
“WE WILL DO EVERYTHING TO QUALIFY FOR THE WORLD CUP NEXT YEAR.”
work with young players they are motivated‚ and hungry to show something.
“So I think that‚ after South Africa did not qualify for the [next] Afcon‚ this is the moment to start to rebuild a younger team‚ who may have some difficulties to qualify for the next World Cup‚ but will be ready maybe to play an important role one year later in Afcon [the 2023 event in the Ivory Coast].”
Broos’ approach is no doubt right and will also buy him some time with the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifiers to start in the coming months.
It is a reboot of Vision 2022, which failed dismally in its senior national team objectives, at least, and now the project has switched to 2026 and the World Cup that year.
Broos, and SAFA president Danny Jordaan, have made that clear and the immediate aim is to take pressure off the Belgian coach to reach Qatar.
He will be shrewd enough to know that with the tools currently at his disposal, that would be a long shot at the best of times. The idea that he will turn Bafana Bafana into one of the continent’s leading sides overnight is fanciful.
And so he can now use the 2022 qualifiers almost as a testing phase, though the truncated calendar that will see the group phase potentially last just three months, means there is little time to build any momentum.
Broos will learn more as he gets to know the South African game, but the problems within the team are clear even to the coach at first glance.
“I will look at several games South Africa played in the last few months‚ and with all that we will analyse what we have to do,” he said.
“There were some things that were a bit surprising looking at this past qualification campaign‚ such as it was very difficult for the team to keep a clean sheet. Except against Sao Tome‚ in the other games they always conceded a goal. In some games they conceded in the beginning of the game.
“This is something we have to work on. But there are many other things. I will have meetings on what we have to do in the next month.
“We will do everything to qualify for the World Cup next year. But it can be a deception if we don’t‚ because when you are starting to rebuild a team it needs time.”
“EVERY DAY THERE WAS A DIFFERENT NAME. BUT THAT CAME FROM THE MEDIA.”
A born winner
There is a distasteful habit among South African football fans of accusing some foreign coaches of being “plumbers”, the insinuation being that they are stealing a living in football when their skills lie elsewhere.
That accusation could never be levelled at Broos though, as his achievements in the game speak of a player and coach born to win, and one who has the tools to create success.
Aside from his Nations Cup success with Cameroon, Broos has three Belgian league titles under his belt as a coach, and was named that country’s Coach of the Year on four sperate occasions as well. Add in there a couple of Belgian Cups and he has a full trophy cabinet at home.
But he also enjoyed incredible success as a player, making 511 appearances as a defender for top local sides Anderlecht and Club Brugge.
With Anderlecht he won a hat-trick of domestic league titles, four Belgian Cup winners’ medals, two Belgian League Cup successes, and lifted the European Cup Winners’ Cup twice as well as the UEFA Cup, tournaments which have now morphed to form the UEFA Europa League.
It was an incredible run of success over a decade and instilled in him the winning mentality he hopes to bring to Bafana Bafana.
He later moved to Club Brugge and led them to the league title and the Belgian Cup, continuing his winning ways.
Broos also played 24 times for Belgium, and was part of the squad that finished fourth at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, where they lost to Diego Maradona’s eventual champions Argentina in the semifinals.
They narrowly missed out on a bronze medal after losing the third-place play-off to Michel Platini’s France 4-2 after extra-time.
There is the idea that not all good players make good coaches, and there are certainly examples of this, but the fact that Broos has continued gathering trophies as a coach suggests he has been able to make that adjustment.
Global experience
Broos ended his playing career in 1988 after almost two decades as a professional, and immediately took up the coaching reins
at second-tier side RWD Molenbeek in his homeland.
He led the team to promotion in his second season, but was then snapped up by Club Brugge, where he stayed in charge for six years, lifting the league title twice, including in his first campaign.
He later spent five years at Excelsior Mouscron, three with Anderlecht and then four at Genk, suggesting he was not a coach who hopped around from team to team every season or two, as has become the norm for some.
Broos was the coach who took the late Anele Ngcongca to Belgium and was his first mentor at Genk, where the former Bafana Bafana defender would spend almost a decade.
After leaving Genk in 2008, Broos started something of an odyssey, wanting to break out from Belgium and see more of the world.
He worked at Greek side Panserraikos and Turkish outfit Trabzonspor, before a brief return to Belgium and Zulte Waregem. His foray into Africa was as coach of Algerian side JS Kabylie in 2014, before he later joined NA Hussein Dey in that country.
His first, and only, international role to date with Cameroon started in 2016 and came to an end in early 2018.
He was a candidate for the Bafana Bafana post in 2017 when Shakes Mashaba was sacked, but the job instead went to Stuart Baxter. Even back then, the message was the same.
“He’s very interested in working with a young group and I think the South African national team hasn’t done well in recent years, and if you see how he did with Cameroon, with not only stars but players who want to fight and work hard, I think that [his interest] is a good sign,” Broos’ then agent Gino Laureyssen said at the time.
The coach left Cameroon 10 months after lifting the Nations Cup trophy after fights with the national association over the non-payment of his salary, but a poor showing at the FIFA Confederation Cup in Russia and a failure to reach the World Cup in 2018 were contributing factors.
‘Our only name’
Jordaan says media speculation around other coaches for the position vacated was j just that and Broos was the only name that was put to the National Executive Committee to approve.
“On the question of negotiations that have fallen apart, we don’t know about that,” he said. “This is the first time we are announcing a coach in this process. We are at a stage where some of the coaches, here or in Europe, are coming to the end of their seasons and so it was very difficult to speak with them.
“The clubs’ interests and the coach’s interests had to be considered, so the Technical Committee [tasked with finding the new coach] had to work through all of those issues. “Broos is the only name that we have put to you, the others ones, well, every day there was a different name. But that came from the media.”
Jordaan admitted that they are looking more to the 2026 World Cup than the event in Qatar next year, suggesting qualification for that tournament in the Middle East would be an unexpected bonus.
“At the [expanded 48-team] 2026 World Cup, nine or 10 African teams will go to the tournament. But not only do we want to qualify, we want to have a competitive team that will go to the knockout stages. This is what we will place before him [Broos] and he will devise a plan around that.
“But what we are looking at is the 2022 and 2026 World Cups and the 2023 Afcon. That must also be interspersed with certain other targets, and that is something the CEO [ Tebogo Motlanthe] will sit down and discuss with him.
“But one of the things that he [Broos] has mentioned is that a high percentage of the current team are players of 30 and above, and there is a need to evolve the team going forward.
“We need to look at the opportunity the team has now to go to the Olympics [in Tokyo] and look at younger players. At the same time, the nation wants to win. That is obvious to him [Broos].
“The rebuilding and the rejuvenation is a key priority. For the first time we have a pool of players, like Brazil, who have between 50 and 70 international caps [at all age-group levels] heading into the Olympics.
“We wanted to create a pool of players whereby they were not having their first cap at senior international level and we have achieved that. Our team going to Tokyo will be a significant part of our plans for the future.”
“WE WANTED TO CREATE A POOL OF PLAYERS WHEREBY THEY WERE NOT HAVING THEIR FIRST CAP AT SENIOR INTERNATIONAL LEVEL.”