Johannesburg – New Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos has an advantage and will have no excuse now that the 2022 Fifa World Cup qualifiers have been postponed to September, according to Danny Jordaan, the president of SA Football Association (Safa).
Jordaan said the 69-year-old Belgian can use the Cosafa Cup next month to start preparing the national side.
He told Sunday World: “There will be the Cosafa Cup in June when the PSL season is finished. Maybe he can use some of the players who will be available, as well as our young overseas-based players, because he said he wants to start rebuilding the team.
“The SA Under-23 Olympics team has been invited and will be involved in a pre-Olympics tournament against the likes of Brazil and Italy. He can follow some of the players because those players should progress to Bafana. We will discuss these things with him when he arrives.”
Broos, who won the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations with a youthful Cameroon squad in Gabon, was unveiled by the national association on Wednesday, and will be arriving on Monday evening. “He will be able to watch the final rounds of PSL matches.
This will enable him to see our players and to familiarise himself with what is happening in local football. It will give him a good picture,” said Jordaan.
“We were under pressure because time was not on our side with the initial fixtures that were starting in the first week of June. It was going to be touch and go. With the new schedule, he will be able to do a lot of things with the players he intends to use before his first qualifier in September.”
Though Jordaan would not commit himself, it’s safe to say that SA Under-23 coach David Notoane will be Broos’s assistant or part of his technical team. Safa has a policy that the SA Under-23 coach must work with the senior national team coach.
“We started the policy a while back during Stuart Baxter’s first tenure, where he worked with Steve Komphela as his assistant. Pitso Mosimane was brought on board to work with Carlos Alberto Parreira as part of our succession plan. Molefi Ntseki was Baxter’s assistant before he took over as head coach. The technical team and the office of the CEO office will deliberate with the coach on such matters.”
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