Broos slates standard of PSL football

Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos has come out swinging in his diagnosis of the state of South African football in the year that he has been in charge.

The national team mentor called an impromptu press conference on Tuesday at SAFA House to reflect on his side™s opening 2023 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier away to Morocco, where Bafana lost 2-1 in Rabat.

But Broos did not hold back in criticising the poor state of the country™s football, insisting there are not a lot of œhigh-quality players being produced.

"It's time now to face the real problem. What is the real problem in South Africa? The real problem is that we don't have those high-quality players," said Broos.

"We don't have those players like our three last opponents - Ghana, France, and Morocco. When you see those teams, Ghana - 90 percent of their players were from Europe.

"France, I don't have to explain... Morocco, when you see their selection, there was only one player of the Champions League-winning team Wydad Casablanca, which was the goalkeeper - I think that says enough."

According to Broos, it would be to South Africa™s benefit to emulate his native country, Belgium™s blueprint to success, which has seen the rise of a raft of world-class players such as Kevin De Bruyn, Eden Hazard and the like.

"If South Africa is not facing that problem, and going on with what you are doing already for 20 years - firing the coach and hoping the next one will have results, without solving the problem, then I will be the 17th coach in 20 years who will be fired in a few months," he continued.

"But the problem will still be there. We have to sit together in this country, and we have to face the problem to see what we can do [to address] this problem.

"Not me alone, not I-don't-know-who, no, together with all the coaches, the league, everybody involved in football, and see what we can be doing here to increase the quality.

"We did it in my country - in 2006, we didn't have the big players, we were not in the European championship and World Cups anymore, and we took measures, we saw what we needed and we did it. 10 years later, Belgium was first in the FIFA rankings."

By Mazola Molefe