OPINION: Playing France is wonderful, but it won’t improve Bafana Bafana

Hugo Broos has repeated like a mantra in the build-up to Tuesday’s friendly against world champions France that he would rather play and lose to a top side like Les Bleus than cruise to victory against a Botswana, or another nation South Africa would be expected to easily beat.

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This, Broos claims, is the best ‘friendly; way for Bafana to improve, rubbing shoulders with stars like Paul Pogba and Kylian Mbappe.

While all this sounds lovely it is, to be honest, just not entirely true.

I have, in my time covering Bafana Bafana, watched them live playing friendlies against Brazil (twice), England, Spain (at the time world champions), Germany and the USA among others, and none of these games, I can safely say, has seen the senior national team noticeably improve.

Gordon Igesund’s Bafana, for example, beat Spain at FNB Stadium, and played so well against Brazil in Sao Paulo that the crowd turned on the home team and started cheering for South Africa.

But that didn’t miraculously turn them into world-beaters. It’s great for the supporters, don’t get me wrong, that Bafana get to play high-profile sides, but I just don’t think it makes the blindest bit of difference in terms of marked improvement with their ranks.

It’s not as if Ethan Brooks, for all his young talent, is going to fight it out with N’golo Kante in Lille tomorrow and suddenly start playing like him. Or that Evidence Makhopa will miraculously turn into prime Mbappe.

Schools football, development structures, and all that important jazz are the keystones of a good side, as France have proved with their extraordinary Clairefontaine Academy.

The top-class friendlies mentioned above also illustrate that Broos’ implication that Bafana tend to play smaller sides (Botswana keep getting referenced, not sure what Hugo has against the Zebras) has involved a bit of re-writing history, or at least focusing on the very-recent past.

Bafana certainly haven’t played as many world-class sides in the last few years, but then there has also been that little-talked about virus called Covid-19, which hasn’t exactly made travelling about super-easy.

So it will be good to watch Bafana take on France in Lille later, and to see how Broos’ side will do against Didier Deschamps’ world champions. But the impact this will have on Bafana Bafana’s performances in the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers, when they begin in June, is unlikely to be as huge as Broos’ pre-match spin has implied.

I hope it does improve Bafana, don’t get me wrong, and I hope it gives them the impetus to do well in the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers. But there are deeper problems in South African football than the need to play France in a friendly international.

In truth, Bafana should qualify for every Africa Cup of Nations, whoever they play in friendly matches.
Broos surely knows this, and this is why he has accepted he does not deserve to stay in the job if he can’t get the team to Ivory Coast 2023.

And France, Botswana, or anyone else should have zero bearing on whether this will happen or not.