Golden Arrows coach Manqoba Mngqithi has made a bold assessment of Hugo Broos following Bafana Bafana’s early AFCON exit.
South Africa came back home after they were knocked out of the continental tournament in the Round of 16 by Cameroon.
Despite winning two group-stage matches and losing only once, many were unconvinced by Bafana’s performances. Criticism also followed Broos’ tactical approach against Cameroon, where he deployed a 3-4-3 formation in the defeat.
Mngqithi believes Broos was not as focused at this tournament as he was in the previous edition, when he guided the team to a bronze medal.
He stated that Broos made basic errors, including not starting a quick player like Tshepang Moremi in the Cameroon match, someone who could have posed a threat on the counter-attack.
“Hugo did a lot well that we have to commend him for but in this AFCON I don’t think he was as focused as he was in the previous AFCON,” said Mngqithi during the interview on Prime Time Sports on UKhozi FM.
“The mistakes he made in this one was elementary ones because I think he is a top coach.
“If I can make an example with the Cameroon game. He made a mistake by benching two players who had played impressively before – Moremi and Modiba.
“Before the game, I was thinking that we would need to have people that would exploit the space behind Cameroon. Moremi would have been the best candidate for that because we knew that Cameroon would try to come at us.
“We should have had a plan that if they come at us and we want to hit them with a counter, we must know what we have behind their defence.
“It showed when Modiba put in two good balls into the box, Mudau or Foster should have scored one of them. But the truth is I think in this tournament, we were not beaten, we beat ourselves.”
