Johannesburg – Bafana Bafana head coach Hugo Broos is bold in his assessment of South African football and reckons that if the all-dominating Premier Soccer League (PSL) top dogs Mamelodi Sundowns played in the Belgian league, they will not make it in the top eight.
Broos opened up to Sunday World in a wide-ranging interview aft er South Africa cemented a place at the summit of Group G in the 2022 Fifa World Cup qualifiers with back-to[1]back victories against Ethiopia.
“When I compare SA with Belgium for an example, the best team here Sundowns will not be in the top eight, I am sure. Technically, Sundowns are better than a lot of Belgium clubs. I look at the matches here in South Africa, I see the rhythm is not high and there is a lack tactically, mentally and also when it comes to intensity. It’s not as intense as compared to Belgium, Italy, England or Spain. So, as a result, SA has a lot of distance to cover and we have to work and increase the level of the league to be higher,” said Broos.
“The problem is the foundation of young South African players. When I took over, I noticed Bafana could not win tough games and that means that the mentality is not at the required level,” he said, adding they had no winning spirit.
“The South African players are technically very good and gift ed. In the fi rst camp for the match against Zimbabwe, I realised that the players did not have belief and there was no fire. We worked a lot to fix that and it got bett er with the victory against Ghana. Last week, we had two important and tough matches against Ethiopia and we struggled in the second leg in Johannesburg, but we won the game because of the mentality that we are instilling in the boys.
”Broos also lamented the difficulties of the Fifa’s World Cup qualifi cation criteria when it comes to the African continent.
“It is extremely diffi cult for African countries to qualify for the World Cup. There are 40 countries playing this round of qualifi ers and from the 40, only five teams will qualify.
“It’s not fair, the African continent is bigger than Europe and why not have the same chances?”
But I hear Fifa decided that there will be more teams and also more African teams. That’s a good thing for Africa.
It’s always the same teams from Africa that qualify – Cameroon, Ghana, Egypt, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Nigeria or Morocco, those countries have made big steps forward in their player development.
We have to do that here in SA as well to increase our chances of qualifying and participating in the world cups,” Broos said.
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