Former Mamelodi Sundowns and Al Ahly coach Pitso Mosimane has broken his silence on the links to the Bafana Bafana job, confirming the South African Football Association (SAFA) has indeed spoken to him, among others.
Current coach Hugo Broos’ deal is ending at the end of this month and there hasn’t been any clarity on whether he will renew or the SAFA will get a new person.
The Belgian who took the team to two back-to-back AFCON tournaments and the second round at the 2026 FIFA World Cup after 16 years recently made news in his country, saying he was not returning to Bafana as a head coach.
SAFA were swift to deny those developments and this week a fresh report by the SABC Sport alleged the Belgian was going to get a year’s extension on his contract as the FA was still finalising things regarding his successor. But SAFA were again quick to dismiss that report, too.
Meanwhile, this publication reported Mosimane is the leading name to take over from Broos, should he step aside. On the side of the launch of his Youth Football Coaching Manual in Johannesburg on Thursday Mosimane did reveal that he’s one of the coaches SAFA have spoken to about a succession plan.
“Well, the Bafana job I don’t know when contracts of… I guess you’re talking about coach Hugo Broos right?” said Mosimane when asked whether he’d be interested in the Bafana job.
“I don’t know when the contract ends. Is it available or not? But I know that the federation has spoken to a lot of us about somebody to come in [with a] succession plan – What you want? What you going to do? What’s your plan? How do we take Bafana to a better level?”
‘The bar is not too high’
Mosimane then insisted that although Bafana have done well at the recent FIFA World Cup, he feels the bar has not been set too high and bigger achievements can be reached.
“I always say that it’s important to leave the jersey at a better place. Yeah, there’s room, right? There’s room for improvement. I left Sundowns with the Champions League, did they have the second one?
“So every stage and every level can be reached, can be improved. It’s not the first time we qualify for World Cup, right? Carlos Perreira did it, right? It’s not the first time we won the AFCON. Clive Barker won it, right?
“So we can maybe talk about going into the next round of knockouts. Yes, that we can celebrate. But being in semi-finals, quarter-finals, have we done that? Let’s be honest, right? So that bar, it is high, but has been achieved before.
“So we cannot just say, ‘oh, it’s a high bar and all that’. I mean, I left Sundowns. I won the treble, and they’ve won the league how many times after I left? So really, we can all do it, right? So no one is really we can say indispensable or what are we going to do? Come on, we can do a little bit better, right?
“Yes, I think with Perreira we never lost to Mexico, right? And we were one up, right, until the 80th minute, right? So come on, we played Mexico before right? So really, it’s not really that much that you can say, ‘wow, how big the bar has been’? No, we’ve beaten Morocco.
“We’re beating Nigeria. We’re beating Ghana. So let’s just also be realistic of the truth of what has happened. We can be there. We’ve been in the semi-finals of CAF, right? So anything is possible.
“We can raise the bar. Yes, we have to leave the jersey at a better place. But possible, yes, Why, because it has been done before.”