Hugo Broos
The Bafana Bafana coach has made a good start to his tenure as he looks to build a new, young side for the future.
After Bafana Bafana failed to qualify for the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations in Cameroon, the South Africa Football Association (SAFA) made the decision to sack Molefi Ntseki and hire Hugo Broos. The Belgian arrived with the pedigree of winning the 2017 AFCON with the Indomitable Lions during a period where their squad was in a noticeable decline. KICK OFF’s Lorenz Köhler caught up with the eighth foreign Bafana coach in a revealing interview.
KICK OFF: How did your time coaching in Africa start? We’re aware of your legacy in Belgium but in 2014 you arrived on the continent in Algeria with JS Kabylie? Hugo Broos:
It was an opportunity … first JS Kabylie, they are a top team in Algeria but there were lots of problems. I remember one game there was a player from my team who was hit with a stone [Albert Ebosse] and he died. The competition stopped for four weeks and restarted. I had problems with the chairman because he wanted to name the team selection, so I resigned. In the second team [NA Hussein Dey] it was the same problem… I’ll never ever work in Algeria again. There’s not the right mentality there. That was the start of my work in Africa. A few years later I got the opportunity to coach the Cameroon national team and that was much better, it was a fantastic time.
What did you learn about North African football in your time in Algeria that you have implemented into your coaching style and philosophy?
I only have experience in Algeria – I didn’t work in Tunisia or Egypt, so I must say the mentality was very bad. Not professional, not at all and if there’s something that I need to feel, it is professionalism. It was not around at both clubs, players just come to train, but they are not professional, they didn’t live like professionals. And it was always the interference from the chairman, he wanted to name the team and that’s something I’ll never accept. Every team is my responsibility, I will not be responsible for someone else. That’s why it was a very bad experience for me.
You’ve made quite a clear point on your expectations of control; did you have that at Cameroon, and did you make that clear to SAFA?
Yes. It’s the most important thing, I would feel very bad if tomorrow there’s a chairman who selects my team and I lose the game. I need to do it my way or I’d feel bad, I need to be responsible for my own actions, my decisions and my choices. If it’s good, OK, I’m the one who’s responsible. It’s a very bad feeling when you see a selection of a team you don’t agree with, but you have to because the chairman tells you to put out that team and you lose. So no, this is not my way of working. In Cameroon, there was never interference and I think, based on the contract I have with Mr. [Danny] Jordaan here, he will never do that.
You inherited a Cameroon side that was regressing after a Golden Generation. How did you manage to win AFCON 2017 as the squad didn’t have many of the first-choice players available due to various reasons?
I did what I’m doing now in South Africa. First of all, I listened to all the people who knew their football better than me, the football in Cameroon. When I came to Cameroon, I knew more players than I knew here in South Africa, I have to admit. But OK, I was communicating with my assistant in Cameroon as I have here with Helman Mkhalele. He knows much more than me about South African football and I worked like that in Cameroon. The first selection was more listening to my assistant and then watching the players. I think it’s a bit similar with South Africa, we needed a new, younger team. My first games for Cameroon were two AFCON qualifiers against South Africa, so then I started to put younger players in, players who were hungry, who wanted to show something, and I succeeded. You need a bit of luck also in your choices, but I succeeded. And when they went to AFCON, everyone asked me, ‘what are you going to do there with that team?’. But I knew my players wanted to show something and we had a big ambition to win that AFCON and we did it. It’s a little bit the way I will work here. It was something I didn’t know much about, but I know much more about the
“I NEED TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR MY OWN ACTIONS, MY DECISIONS AND MY CHOICES.”
players now. But also in the future, I will see more games, get to know players more and try to rebuild a new young team. Maybe it’s a bit too difficult to qualify for the [2022] World Cup but certainly for the AFCON in 2023.
Can the changes you implemented with the Indomitable Lions be replicated in South Africa?
That team needed discipline. There were systems used before I was there and I couldn’t believe it. There were players who arrived late, there were players who went to their family first before the national team. No seriously, it happens. .. I implemented more discipline in the team and then I started to build with players with quality. I wanted to have a team on the pitch that would fight for every metre, fight for every ball, not only two, three, four or five, but 11 players. Also, those on the bench because being on the bench is disappointing for a player, but he has to know he can be very important and if you see in Cameroon, [ Vincent] Aboubakar was on the bench, but he scored the decisive goal in the final, so if you can create a group of 23 players who have the same goal, you can be very strong. That was the case for Cameroon, creating a good group, add discipline and the way of playing that suits the team. Of course, in tournaments you need a little bit of luck, we qualified with penalties in the quarterfinal, it’s a lottery, but OK, we won and then from that moment the confidence was so high that we went on to win it.
You look at the squad you had, Christian Bassogog, Jacques Zoua, Clinton N’Jie are some of the names not identified as greats of Cameroon football. In fact, none of the players in the squad have gone on to become superstars – would you say that your way of coaching is more about the collective than trying to get the best of individuals?
You know, if there’s a superstar, he would be there [in the squad]. Don’t think that I will not select a superstar, not at all. But it has to be a genuine superstar. Sometimes players are called that, but they are not at all superstars. So, you have to see what the real quality is of the player. If you don’t have a team, you can’t win a game, this is reality. You can take [the example of ] Barcelona with Messi, but Barcelona was a team and Messi put something more in that team. But it wasn’t only Messi. Because he was a superstar he added more to the team, but they know they have to play together as a team. This is the most important thing if you have a strong team like I had in Cameroon. There were better teams at [the finals in] Gabon in 2017, like Egypt. If you take players one by one, they were better than us, but we had a better team. That is something I wanted to work with but if tomorrow there is a big star in South Africa, he will play, don’t think he won’t play because he’s a superstar. But he will have to know the team won’t play to function him, he has to put his trust and quality to the team.
You speak of hunger often; did that die after winning AFCON 2017, which led to your eventual exit?
If you win AFCON, there’s a decompression. It’s a human nature. You have just won the highest trophy in Africa and then it’s difficult in every game, to have the same ambition in the next game. That happened with the team from that time that we won. When we flew back to Cameroon my local assistant sat next to me in the plane and said to me, ‘coach, now is the time to go’. And I looked at him and said, ‘but we can qualify for the World Cup, so why should I go now?’. He said, ‘coach listen to me, now is the time to go because now your problems will start’. And it was like that, the players didn’t want to be on the bench anymore and they accused me that I asked for money to put players in the team. So they created a very bad atmosphere around the squad. We lost the first game after AFCON in Algeria; I didn’t recognise my team there and we were out of the qualification for the World Cup in Russia. And then it was finished.
“IF YOU TAKE PLAYERS ONE BY ONE, THEY WERE BETTER THAN US, BUT WE HAD A BETTER TEAM.”
You have a consistency in the way you select squads in terms of four midfielders, eight or nine attackers. Does that mean you’re going to play the same way as you did with Cameroon and does that mean you see similarities in the type of players here in South Africa?
There are some similarities, but not for everyone because I think South African football players are different. In Cameroon,
they are tall and strong. In South Africa they are rather small but very technical, so there’s a difference in the type of football between the two countries. But again, for me, it’s important because that’s the way I work to create a team a strong team, so I’ll do the same process and aim for the same results I achieved in Cameroon with a team that fights and wants to win. It’s not that because I select seven strikers that I will play without thinking of the opponent and just attack and lose the game. On the field, I want to have a team where 11 players want to score a goal but if we lose the ball, then also strikers have a job to win the ball, this is something I want.
We don’t have many successful players abroad right now – so what do you make of the talent pool, the standard of the PSL players as you now have to scout in order to create this team you’re looking for?
If you have talent then you have to play, this is a big problem here in South Africa. You see teams have an excessive number of players. I see players changing from teams and then sit on the bench. For example, Njabulo Ngcobo was the best defender in the country last season, now he changed clubs and he’s on the bench. The best defender of the country isn’t playing. This is the problem here in South Africa. Even in my selection there are players who don’t play, so now for the moment they have pre-season, so physically they are good, but if it goes on like this, they lose the tempo of the game and this is a problem. South African clubs need to change their philosophy. I agree they all want the best players. I would do that also; I work with those players. But they have to also think, if I take this player now, I already have four in that position, why should I take the fifth one? It will be a problem in future too. [Nyiko] Mobbie, for example, was playing every game, now he went back to Mamelodi Sundowns and he’s on the bench, this is a bad situation for South African football, players are not getting the opportunities to play and develop. Too many players. And it reflects on the national team.
So, you feel the lack of exporting talent outside the league is hindering the development of the national team?
It’s always better that they can play in better and stronger competitions, if you are in France, Belgium, England. Those are stronger competitions than in South Africa. The players of Bafana Bafana, if they play there, will be better. It’s normal that if you train and play with better players you become better too. My first impression here is that South African players have a good life, and they really don’t want to go to Europe. This is my impression now. They need to have more ambition to go to Europe, but they must know that life there is very different to life here. I saw some very good games since I’ve been here, and I’ve seen some bad games. I saw games with tempo and some very slow. At the moment, I don’t really know [about the standard] it’s very difficult to find the right tempo at the beginning of the season. We’ll see in the next months. Secondly, I’ve seen a few players that are overweight. For me, this is a big surprise, a professional player in a professional team and you are overweight? I don’t understand that, maybe this is something that I perhaps I have to be more severe with players. This is not possible to have professional players overweight.
Why did you reject the offer to coach Democratic Republic of Congo for Bafana? What do you hope to achieve during your stay?
I think that it’s a better project than Congo. The project is good, we need to rebuild, I know the responsibility, I know there is quality, but we have to work to develop it. That will take some time, not in one or two months. But if we work like this and players follow my philosophy, I have no doubt we will have a good team. I hope to achieve the highest, maybe the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualification will be difficult, but we’ll fight and see. In 2023, the ambition is to do better than the past AFCON’s and why not win it?
“FOR ME, THIS IS A BIG SURPRISE, A PROFESSIONAL PLAYER IN A PROFESSIONAL TEAM AND YOU ARE OVERWEIGHT?”