Bafana Bafana head coach Hugo Broos has slammed the Premier Soccer League leadership for ignoring his request to have no league fixtures on 30 and 31 December to give his players time to rest ahead of the Africa Cup of Nations.
The Belgian tactician expressed his annoyance with the PSL, revealing he had sent a letter to the PSL offices to not have a DStv Premiership match-day on 30 and 31 December, but there was no response.
The 2023 AFCON kicks off on 13 January, with Bafana starting their campaign against Mali on 16 January, leaving Broos and his players little time to prepare.
“The players will have started in the beginning of August, and 80% of the Bafana players are playing in the top teams in South Africa, so that mean they will play many games,” he explained.
“It should’ve been very good for those players to give them six, seven days off. PSL should’ve stopped on the 23 [December], like I asked immediately after the end of last season.
“Within two days after the last game, the last game was finished and the next day we sent the letter, and asked them ‘please stop PSL on the 23’ and also the reason why so we can give the players off six, seven days.
“Did they read the letter? [Makes sarcastic noise] I don’t know, I don’t know. They ignored it.
“When I saw the program, the first thing I did was to see when it stopped and I saw 30 and 31 [December], and I said ‘Ok, why was I expecting something’.
“It doesn’t interest them, it doesn’t interest them [PSL]. They just don’t want to give you a good opportunity and a good environment to prepare the team.”
Broos was then asked whether he faced similar challenges in Cameroon when he won the 2017 AFCON, and insisted it was a completely different scenario, as the FECAFOOT put the national team first.
“To give you an example, I was two weeks in Cameroon and I asked for a meeting with the coaches and they were all there,” he continued.
“Here I did already four attempts – I’m not blaming the coaches – four attempts, four times it’s postponed by the PSL,”
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“You asked PSL now for stopping the league one week earlier to give [the players] off [and get no response]. I just have to do this in Cameroon [snaps finger].
“If it was for the national team, everything you wanted… I wanted a camp – ‘Ok coach, what do you want’. ‘I want a camp then to prepare’. We went Equatorial Guinea to prepare for AFCON because we thought that was the best thing to do. No problem. ‘Ok coach, what do you want? Four days, five days? Ok’.
“I went with the team manager to Equatorial Guinea to look for the hotel, to look for the pitch, to look [for] everything. We came back, we said here that is what we want, that is what we asked. No problem.
“Here it’s totally different. There, everything moves when it was the national team. Here the national team has to move for the PSL. I’m very sorry but it is like that, there is no collaboration.”
