Bafana exited the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations at the hands of Cameroon in the Round of 16 and, despite seeing plenty of the ball, struggled to break down an organised Indomitable Lions defence.
Cameroon had only four shots on goal all game but scored from two of them, and it is that clinical execution South Africa lacks, according to Broos, something that can mostly only be gained by playing in top leagues week in, week out.
“There are teams at the Cup of Nations with players who play in Europe. We mostly don’t have them, and that is a disadvantage for South Africa,” Broos said. “Cameroon is a brand-new team, and when you see where those players are playing, there’s a guy, the striker Christian Kofane, he’s playing for Bayer Leverkusen. He’s 19 years old.
“So this is the opportunity our players need to have because they have to be challenged more. I said from the beginning that the level of the PSL compared with the level we had in the last weeks is very different, and you can only close that gap when you have players who are also playing in very difficult competitions.
“So let’s hope that players in the future have more opportunities to go to Europe and play in those very difficult competitions and face those challenges, because that should help this team enormously.”
Broos says finding top-quality opponents for Bafana Bafana is only a short-term fix in trying to expose players to better teams, and that in reality they need to be facing top-quality opponents at club level week in, week out.
“It’s not because you play once against Argentina or once against Ghana that suddenly your level will go up. No, this is something else. But yeah, what can we do? We just hope they get the opportunity and make the step,” he said.
Broos repeated his comments from the post-match press conference following the defeat to Cameroon, where he said he would not make an assessment of their campaign now but take time to evaluate and formulate a report with recommended changes ahead of the 2026 World Cup.
“We have to prepare for the World Cup and see what went wrong in the preparation for this AFCON and what went wrong with the team,” he said. “This is an analysis that I will make next week and in the coming weeks. Making comments or declarations now is not the time or the place to do that.”
