Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos has ample belief that his players will rise to the occasion when they face 2023 Africa Cup of Nations hosts Ivory Coast in an international friendly today.
The South Africa played to a lacklustre 0-0 draw with Eswatini at home on Friday as they failed to string together passes or create scoring opportunities.
It was a such dull performance that Broos was seething with disappointment in his post-match press conference, saying it was the team’s worst performance since he took over in 2021.
Bafana will get a chance to redeem themselves when they face Ivory Coast away in their last preparations for 2026 World Cup qualifiers against Benin and Rwanda next month.
And while that won’t be easy after the Elephants drew 1-1 with Morocco, at home on Saturday, Broos is backing his team to deliver in Abidjan.
“Yes, I think (we are ready for Ivory Coast). They are the hosts and certainly one of the candidates to win Afcon. They are a very good team with good players,” Broos said.
“You can compare them a little bit with the team that played against Morocco. So that means we also must be at our best level come the game.
“We showed against Morocco in Johannesburg that we can do it. So, we are still confident in this team. We may have played a bad game on Friday, but we can’t doubt everything.
“The quality is there. So, it’s a matter of focus and mentality. We might have played badly on Friday, but I don’t think that will happen (today).”
Granted it was a poor performance from the South Africans on Friday, but the
Belgian has also looked at that result and performance as a wake-up call they needed.
Bafana are in Group E for next year’s Afcon alongside Tunisia, Mali and Namibia, who held them to a goalless draw in a friendly last month.
“I think it’s quite easy. The quality of the players is without a doubt. I think it was more of the question of the mentality,” Broos said.
“Maybe we underestimated the opponent. That’s why we had more and more problems against an opponent like that. We are confident that tomorrow we’ll tell a different story.”
Bafana and Broos will head to Afcon confident. The 71-year-old won the continental showpiece with Cameroon in 2017, while Bafana have shown a lot of improvement in recent months.
Bafana are unbeaten in their last 10 games. And it’s perhaps for that reason that Broos doesn’t want to relive his emotions from Friday, having cut a dejected figure on the bench.
“I was very disappointed to see the performance on the pitch. We tried to make some corrections during halftime but that, too, didn’t work,” he said.
“You can shout and do anything (but it wasn’t to be). But we must learn. It’s not enough to be on the pitch, it’s just a question of mentality. We must focus, and we didn’t see that on Friday.”