Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos has explained why he feels it’s too early for Relebohile Mofokeng to start games for the national team.
Mofokeng, 20, made his fifth Bafana appearance in South Africa’s 3-0 win over South Sudan on Tuesday, coming off the bench in all of them.
This week, he had 16 minutes to impress, with large parts in a packed DHL Stadium asking for him to come on.
After the match, Broos explained that his side needs the right balance between skilful and physically strong players to do well.
“In modern football you need power, yes, technically you have to be good but the physical side of football – be able to play 90 minutes but also to have the power and we have that power in our team now,” he told reporters.
“We had it also in AFCON. That’s why we can compete with teams like Algeria, like Ivory Coast, like we did in March and also in November last year.
“I think two years ago it was not possible. And this also something I mean when I say the level in PSL is not high enough. Technical it’s ok, there are good players, but [we need] this.
“That’s what I always try to do, to have players like Mofokeng, a little bit too early for him to play from the beginning.
“But Mofokeng is not a powerful player, so you need someone next to him that can do the work for him.
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“This is what we try to do every time when we select players – I understand people are like ‘why not this one, why not that one’.
“It’s not a choice of players [just based on quality] – ‘oh, this is a good player, that’s why we choose him’.
“No we have to build a team and I think we did that in the last two years and we have a good team now and this is very important.”
