Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos has highlighted the desire within his camp to qualify for a first FIFA World Cup in over two decades.
South Africa’s last appearance at the global showpiece came 13 years ago when they hosted the first-ever World Cup on African soil, for which they qualified automatically, but have not competed at this stage by merit since Korea/Japan all the way back in 2002.
With three points on the board, and leading Group C with a game in hand, Broos has noted a particular urge from the current crop of players to take one step closer in their journey towards USA, Canada, and Mexico in 2026, when they face Rwanda this afternoon (15:00 kick-off).
“I think with the group we have now, it’s not such a problem [to play back-to-back qualifiers in a short space of time]. The guys have shown me what they want – they want to go to the World Cup and they want to go very far in that,” Broos told SAFA Media from Butare.
“Even though we had a bad travel, and it will be a bad pitch, I think they are grown up in that kinds of situations, so the mindset of the team stays very good, even when we have to do such things. So I don’t really worry about my team, I know they will be ready for the game, but on the other side, on such a pitch, anything can happen and this is something I hope will not happen tomorrow, but I hope the game will be decided by something normal and regular.”
As for the approach on an artificial turf the Belgian described as “playing on the street”, it’s expected to be a scrappy affair that he hopes will end with another full haul of points. There’s nothing wrong with the synthetic grass or pitch, we also had one in Liberia that was fantastic – that was a new-generation synthetic pitch, and nobody complained about it,” Broos shared.
“We didn’t have to complain because it was good, it was synthetic but it was good, but here is a synthetic pitch that’s maybe 20-25 years old, very badly maintained, so it’s like you’re playing on the street. It’s hard, it’s not [even], there are many bounces of the ball when you see it in games of Rwanda, so it’s very difficult to play good football here, and it will be more fighting football,” he added.
Watch the action LIVE on SABC 1, SABC + and sabcsport.com from 14:30 this afternoon.
(story credit: SABC Sport)
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