Bafana Bafana head coach Hugo Broos was asked about his comments on fans being able to kill him if he didn’t qualify for the Africa Cup of Nations by Ivorian media.
When the 2017 AFCON winner was appointed as successor to Molefi Ntseki back in May 2021 he stated South African fans shouldn’t judge him on the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifiers but could kill him, if he didn’t qualify the nation for 2023 Côte d’Ivoire.
This has been achieved in a group with Morocco and Liberia after South Africa missed out on the previous edition in Cameroon, which marked Ntseki’s final game as head coach when they lost away to Sudan.
Ahead of meeting the Elephants in Abidjan, the media revisited his bold statement and asked what the objectives are for the biennial event for Bafana – now that they are AFCON bound in West Africa.
“Qualifying was a good step, but we do not want to just go home after just three games, we have a competitive group, Tunisia, Mali and Namibia in the group, so it’s going to be a difficult group,” Broos said.
“But it could have been harder, there are good teams in the group, that’s why the Ivory Coast game is a good test for us – that will allow us to assess the areas we need to improve, but as stated earlier, I don’t want to go home after just three games.
“It’s not something I am accustomed to, going home after the group stages, remember when I went to Gabon with the Cameroon team, everyone was wondering what I was going to do with that [inexperienced] team but we came out on top as winners.
“But the competition is different from that game, the first goal is to qualify for the first knockout round then we’ll see, because once we qualify you can end up with an opponent you can beat or end up with the best opponent in the competition, anything goes. In any case, let’s set the first objective of qualifying out the group stages.”
South Africa and the Elephants meet at Le Stade Félix-Houphouët-Boigny this evening at 21h00.
