OPINION: Broos’ Bafana tenure hasn’t got off on the firmest footing

Hugo Broos has barely been in the Bafana job five minutes and there are already rumours of discontent.

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It might only get worse, too, if Safa can’t settle on a local assistant coach soon, and if they can’t organise any friendly internationals for Bafana to play next month.

It is now clear that Broos’ first choice to join him as an assistant was Molefi Ntseki, the former Bafana head coach sacked at the end of March. The Belgian 69 year-old even announced Ntseki as having been appointed on the radio, though that proved to be untrue, as he could not agree terms with Safa.

So Broos has seemingly been left scrambling around for another candidate, before he jets off back to Belgium on Monday to get his Covid-19 booster jab.

In the meantime, his assistants, Belgian Cedomir Janevski, and the unnamed assistant, are set to take charge of the June friendlies, if they happen at all.

In Safa’s defence, it is difficult to organise games in these strange times, with travel restrictions caused by a global pandemic. The Confederation of African Football already postponed the start of World Cup qualification, originally set for next month, to September, in light of these issues.

With Safa expecting to play Zimbabwe and Ghana in qualifying for Qatar 2022, that also left them little time to arrange friendlies for Broos, even if it did give the Belgian at least a little more time to try and build a Bafana capable of at least putting up a good show in World Cup qualifying.

And now there is an extra spanner in the works, with the Premier Soccer League moving the dates of their final DStv Premiership matches, to slap bang in the middle of the Fifa international week.

It seems unlikely Safa will be able to use the weekend of June 4-6 at all for international matches, with the Premiership concluding on June 5. So they will have to work around this, on top of all their other issues. Or the PSL will have to shift their final fixtures again.

Either way, lining up opponents at this late stage without being able to give them specific dates is far from ideal. And this has been a concerning start to Broos’ tenure, before he has even set foot on a training field.