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By Sibongiseni Gumbi

Football Writer


Was Broos not supposed to come with solutions to Bafana problems?

Broos is now suddenly complaining that our players are not at the same level as those of Ghana, Morocco and France.


When Hugo Broos was hired, there were a lot of negative people who did not believe he was the right coach for our Bafana Bafana. Some went as far back as exposing how he abruptly left the Cameroonian national team after guiding them to the Afcon championship. 

They said he is a kind of coach who runs at the first sight of difficulty. I never agreed with them. And the first things he spoke about made me believe that even if he is here for six months, he would have chartered a path which anyone after him would be compelled to take. 

Broos spoke of only using young players as part of grooming them for the future. He said he would not pick players who are aged over 30. Perhaps those are the things that I wanted to hear and it made me want to give him a chance. 

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So, even when he went against his word and started calling some players over 30, I still felt because Broos was not calling them based on club form, maybe he knows what he wants to get off them and impart onto the youngsters he was picking. 

He had a promising start. But I started suspecting that he was losing the plot when he agreed to the media conference after the Ghana game where they even had players coming to explain how they ‘were robbed’ and didn’t deserve to have lost that game. 

It was all well for them to complain because we all felt the referee could have done better in that game. But getting the players to not take responsibility for not winning, but rather to shift the blame elsewhere was not doing us any good. 

I still say this, Rushine De Reuck knows that he did commit the foul from which Ghana scored. And while we cannot blame him, he needed to learn from it, and the best way for that was for him to take responsibility. 

But he was shaded from it, and they all came out to blame the referee and the treatment in Ghana. Okay, we got over that. But now last week Broos came out to tell us something we already knew – I was like, if ‘preaching to the choir was a person’, Broos would probably be that person. 

Broos is now suddenly complaining that our players are not at the same level as those of Ghana, Morocco and France. Well, you previously suggested that the same players could have beat those Ghanaians had it not been for poor officiating, but you are changing your tune? Hhay’khona. You are now very suspect as a coach who can take us forward. 

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One would believe that you did your research before applying for the job, and knew the problems you were walking into, and had solutions. That’s what one would expect from a decent coach. 

Just a quick research that cannot take you longer than five hours would have told you that we have always complained about the standard and level of our players. We have always questioned their ambitions in terms of not being keen on moves to big European leagues where they would compete with the best in the world. 

I cannot believe that you blindly walked into a situation where you thought you’d find high quality players only to be disappointed when you started working.

It is okay, we understand where you are going with your complaints. We have seen this movie before, it is just that it has changed the cast but it’s the same script. You have made your millions, and now you want a way out. But please don’t patronise us.

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