Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos has explained his decision not to include Percy Tau in his final squad for the upcoming AFCON qualifiers.
Broos named a 23-man team to take on Uganda and South Sudan next month, and Tau was one of the notable exclusions from the final list.
Broos explained that there were two main reasons why he opted to not choose the Al Ahly player.
“Percy Tau, it was not an easy decision for me, not to select him,” Broos said on SABCSport as he announced the squad on Thursday.
“But there were two things that I took in account. First of all, Percy received a lot of criticism for the moment when he plays for Bafana Bafana, so I tried to protect him and support him for the game against Algeria, he was not there.
“But then you see after the game against Nigeria, it was again the same thing. So ja, they don’t like him for the moment, and they expect too much about him.
“I had contact with him, and he said, ‘Yes, but this is part of the game’. I said, ‘yeh, yeh, this is part of the game’. But somebody who tells me that it doesn’t affect him, he’s lying. So I know that it affects you because you love your country, you want to play, and you don’t have the feedback from the supporters.
“And secondly, the situation in Al Ahly, for the moment, is not clear. There are a lot of rumours. He’s going to leave it, there’s a problem with the transfer fee, he don’t play anymore. From the beginning of August, he just played 17 minutes, and all the other games he was not even on the bench.
“So his situation is not good, and I was little bit afraid with all that, that Percy for the moment is not really ready. We need the players who are ready, not only physically, but also mentally, because those two games, the first games of qualifiers are very important. You can’t make a mistake. Now you have to win those two games, and that’s the reason why I decided not to take Percy for those two games.”
