Broos Sends Message To His Critics

Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos has sent a message to his critics, saying he is here to stay and didn’t just come to South Africa to pick up a pay cheque.

The Belgian tactician and his team are currently preparing for the two friendly matches against Mozambique and Angola on Thursday and Sunday.

However, Broos, who never shies away from giving his honest assessment about the quality of South African football (or lack thereof) has not been without criticis.

On Thursday, though, the coach insisted he is here to stay and wants to fulfil his ambitious targets with the South African men’s national team to silence his doubters.

“There is something called ambition,” he said during a press conference.

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“Even when I become little by little an old man the ambition is still there. I didn’t come to South Africa to get my money at the end of the month and that’s it.

“I came to South Africa to be in AFCON, to qualify for the World Cup and I think we did a very good job to qualify for the World Cup now.

“Maybe we were not experienced enough, maybe we were not ready enough because for me it was very difficult in the beginning to know the players. I’ve always said I didn’t know many players, maybe I knew five players. For the rest I had to see games to get to know them, so it was a little bit difficult.

“About the critics, when you’ve got 35 years in doing the job, you know that it happens.

“The only thing that was frustrating for me was that it was not fair. It’s not fair when you lose 5-0 to France, saying ‘humiliation’ and ‘the coach has to be fired’ and so on.

“We played against the world champions and everybody forgot that. We played a very good campaign in the qualifiers and we lost one game, yes an important game against Ghana [but] Ghana is one of the top teams in Africa, France are the world champions.

“We played after that against Morocco, one of the top teams in Africa. They are going to the World Cup. There was no player in the selection that plays in the domestic league, now for the [World Cup] selection there are three, I think. The rest is playing in Europe.

“This is not fair asking, when you’re building a new team, ask that you beat those teams and therefor I was frustrated in June and I said some things and I will repeat them again because I feel that was the truth.

“But that doesn’t mean that I have enough of that, not at all, I want to prove something, why I’m here and I’m confident. I’m confident in myself and we will be qualified for AFCON in March, you will see!

“Critics are not so easy to accept because it motivates you sometimes but they have to be fair. That was not the case.”