Broos looking for total Bafana revamp
● Hugo Broos, 69, arrives in SA tomorrow to assume his role as the new Bafana Bafana coach whose immediate task is to quickly rebuild a team that can qualify for the 2022 Fifa World Cup in Qatar.
This, without a doubt, will be a mammoth ask for the Belgian who was not the SA Football Association’s (Safa) No 1 choice to succeed Molefi Ntseki.
The Sunday Times reported last week that former Bafana striker Benni McCarthy, now the head coach at AmaZulu FC, was the one that the association had earmarked for Bafana after failing to get their preferred target Carlos Queiroz.
Safa were, however, left with no option but to name Broos after failing to agree with McCarthy’s demands that the Sunday Times sources said included an over a million rand monthly salary and a full-time support staff that would have included his assistants at AmaZulu, Siyabonga Nomvete, Vasili Manousakis and goalkeeper coach Moeneeb Josephs.
“Benni’s demands were just ridiculous,” a highly placed Safa official said.
Broos told the Sunday Times from Belgium on Friday that he’ll only talk about his appointment after arriving and signing what Safa president Danny Jordaan said would be a five-year deal.
If the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) winner with Cameroon completes his term he will become the longest-serving Bafana coach, surpassing Clive Barker’s long-standing record of three years between 1994 and 1997.
However, with qualification for the 2022 World Cup, 2023 and 2025 Afcon and 2026 World Cup his main mandates, it remains to be seen how long Broos’s stay with a team he knows little about will last.
Talking to the SA media about his appointment on Wednesday, Broos said Bafana need a total revamp akin to what he did with Cameroon before they won the Afcon in Gabon.
“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 SA,” said Broos, whose honours as a coach at club level include winning the Belgian league with Club Brugge in 1991-92 and 1995-96 and with Anderlecht in 2003-04.
The new Bafana coach got a break a day after his appointment when the Confederation of African Football (Caf) moved the kick-off of the 2022 World Cup qualifiers from June to September.
The postponement will give Broos lots of time to familiarise himself with SA football and work closely with the SA Under-23 coach David Notoane whose team will face hosts Japan, France and Mexico in the Tokyo Olympics that will be played from July 23 to August 8.
Broos has to top Group G which has Zimbabwe, Ghana and Ethiopia and win a twoleg play-off with one of the other nine group winners to become the third coach after Barker (1998) and Carlos Queiroz (2002) to qualify Bafana for the World Cup.
Jordaan said the finer details of Broos’s contract will be concluded when the coach “sits down” with Safa CEO Tebogo Motlanthe after arriving in the country tomorrow.
“It’s not just the length of the contract. Ideally, we said before, it’s 2022 [the Qatar World Cup], 2023 Afcon and the 2026 World Cup. But when he comes it must be interspersed with certain targets. So those are matters that the CEO will finalise with him.”
Broos will find a Bafana team that will be low on confidence after failing with Ntseki to qualify for Afcon, which will be played in Cameroon early next year. In Ghana, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia, Bafana will face teams full of hope after qualifying for Cameroon.
‘With the analysis I made, I think it’s the moment to build a new team in SA’