Broos enjoying Afcon build up but again blasts PSL

Bafana Bafana head coach Hugo Broos says he enjoys the tournament environment of building up to and playing in an Africa Cup of Nations finals far more than the short time he gets to spend with his players in the course of a normal season.

Broos leads a side into an Afcon finals for the second time, having led Cameroon all the way to the title in 2017 in Gabon.

The odds are stacked against the Belgian in his bid to repeat the trick with Bafana, but in a 24-team tournament, where 16 teams make it through the group stages, it is fair to expect South Africa to at the very least make the knockout rounds.

Bafana returned to Johannesburg on Tuesday, after a training camp in Stellenbosch, and will play a behind-closed-doors friendly against Lesotho on Wednesday before jetting of to the Ivory Coast.

“These are better circumstances,” said Broos this week on the time he gets to spend preparing his team.

“(In qualifying) you have the team for ten days and then it is ‘bye bye’ and you see them again two or three months later.

“Now you have them for the first day, every day, for 24 hours you can talk with them, train with them. It is totally different. I enjoy that, working with them every day. This is the Afcon, in nine days we play our first game. You know what is coming so you can work towards that moment. I enjoy things like this more, than every month you have qualification, you are gone, and then you come back.”

‘I can’t understand this’

This is not to say Broos has been entirely happy with his team’s preparation. He has made no secret of his irritation with the Premier Soccer League for not agreeing to stop the season on Christmas Eve, so that he and the squad could have more time to work. Instead, the league ran right until the end of the year.

“The four days the guys had off has been good, but it is not enough,” said Broos in Stellenbosch this week.

“We said this already last year in May in a letter to the PSL, but you know the story, for them other things are more important than the national team and I can’t understand this.”

“In December they answered our letter, and said ‘we support Bafana and the coach,’ and I had to laugh. If they did that they would stop the competition on December 24. But ok … it is what it is, we will adapt and I am sure the guys will be ready on December 16 when we play our first game (against Mali).”