Bafana Bafana head coach Hugo Broos was left with a bitter taste in his mouth as he opened up on the Kaizer Chiefs ‘commotion’.
Broos stated after naming his final 23-man squad that “no Chiefs player deserved to be in the squad” at present but was left upset by allegedly being misquoted in the media.
While he stands by his original statement, he felt saying players aren’t good enough was not part of the message, nor was it an attack on the head coach Molefi Ntseki and the club.
“I have to be careful of what I’m saying. I felt it the last few days that what you’re saying is not only what you mean,” he said at FNB Stadium on Monday afternoon.
“There was a lot of commotion between me and Kaizer Chiefs, especially Mr. Ntseki, the coach of Kaizer Chiefs.
“I’m fully responsible for what I said last Wednesday, when I announced the 23 players, about the players of Kaizer Chiefs.
“I said first that they don’t deserve to be with the national team. And when I said they don’t deserve it, I didn’t mean that they didn’t have the skills but the performances are not enough to be Bafana Bafana.
“When you see that, at that moment, Kaizer Chiefs have four points of 12 in the competition and you saw what the reaction was of the supporters after the defeat to Galaxy, I don’t think that I said something wrong.
“Secondly, I’m responsible when I’ve said that there are many new players [at Chiefs] and that it takes some time that everything is okay. Because it’s not easy to implement 5-6 new players in your team.
“And I’m responsible also for, as I said that there was nothing changed [at Chiefs], compared to last season. Kaizer Chiefs struggled all the season last year, I don’t know which plays in the ranking they ended but the performances were not what we can expect from Kaizer Chiefs.”
The 2017 Africa Cup of Nations winning coach continued to point fingers at certain sections of the media for the negative discourse sowed within the general public after the backlash and admitted Nteski didn’t take kindly to what trasinpired.
“I’m not responsible for the things that someone amongst you [media] tried to put in my mouth and I didn’t say, and I quote ‘Ntseki didn’t change anything’. I never said that and that is very bad. And I’m really upset about that.
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“If you want to criticise the coach of a team, do it yourself. Don’t use me by letting me say things that I didn’t say. I’m really, really upset.
“I’m here because I trust you and I hope that you quote me about things that I’m saying but not what you did now and I know who did it.
“You can be sure that if I lose confidence in you [media] and trust that you don’t quote me correctly, that my press conferences will be very basic in the future. And that I will not answer any more questions from you. This is very bad.
“Again, I’ve always taken responsibility for what I’ve said, but not this. And I mean, what I’m saying now, this you can’t do.”
South Africa take on Namibia at Orlando Stadium on Saturday afternoon before DR Congo at the same venue three days later.
