Hugo Broos’s bors is warm and I don’t blame him.
The Bafana Bafana boss ripped into South Africa’s lack of players plying their trade in football’s biggest leagues again this week.
And it’s not the first time the Belgian – or any of his predecessors for that matter – has done that.
In fact, go and ask any coach in Mzansi now and if they are honest they will tell you the exact same thing.
Broos hit the nail hard on the head and the truth hurts.
Let’s be real, we don't have players representing us week in, week out in the Premier League or Bundesliga or La Liga.
Hell, even the path we had into the Dutch Eredivisie with Ajax is gone.
And when Broos and his team were criticised for recent defeats to France and Morocco, I got the feeling that it was all just sour grapes.
I’ve been a fan of his ideas since his arrival last year.
And but for an unjust penalty for Ghana in our only defeat in World Cup qualifying, I think he’d have some more support.
But that doesn’t paper over the cracks in our game as a whole.
Mense were upset with a 5-0 pak at the hands of world champions France. Did they honestly expect Bafana to compete with and beat Kylian Mbappe, Karim Benzema, N’Golo Kante and company? Rerig waar?
Broos pointed out this week that the Moroccan team that beat his team 2-1 only had their goalkeeper playing in the domestic league.
With the Atlas Lions coming back from a goal down to win the Afcon qualifier, the gulf in quality and professionalism showed.
PSL Defender of the Season Lyle Lakay was clueless how to stop Achraf Hakimi.
Compared to Lakay, who is certainly one of our best leftbacks, Hakimi was just in a different class.
The Moroccan has been on the books at Real Madrid and Inter Milan and he trains against Lionel Messi every day at Paris St Germain. Nou hoe?
There were examples of those mismatches all over the pitch.
And that’s the reality that Broos is trying to highlight.
While he says that he believes that his group of players give their alles, what do you expect?
Like so many national team coaches before him, he is working with one hand tied behind his back.
One of his biggest gripes has been that he has not been given an opportunity to meet with his PSL colleagues.
It would be a massive if for all coaches to be on the same page.
Broos made the example of what Belgium did after their failure to make the 2006 World Cup.
Why do we have a coach that doesn’t believe in our talent and League.
— Kermit Romeo Erasmus (@Erasmus_95) June 14, 2022
Sorry for thinking out loud!
The whole football community changed their approach to develop their young talent.
And while they didn’t even qualify for 2010, by 2014 they were regulars at the top of the Fifa rankings.
By that time, elke groot span in Europe were looking for Belgian talent and now the likes of
Thibaut Courtois, Eden Hazard and Kevin de Bruyne are household names.
Hugo Broos: "The level of PSL is not high enough for us to succeed.
— Thomas Mlambo (@thomasmlambo) June 14, 2022
"The problem is we don't have those high quality players"
Thoughts on this, guys.. pic.twitter.com/TRfssjk4EZ
It’s the kind of cooperation that we see between our franchise and national teams in our rugby setup.
And since the Springboks were made the priority for almal in the rugby fraternity when Rassie Erasmus took the reins from a handicapped Alister Coetzee, the Bokke became world champions.
So it’s not a foreign idea.
Safa and the PSL could do with smoking a peace pipe, rather than continue their ridiculous turf war.
Many mense in Mzansi football vang ‘n pyn over Broos’s home truths this week.
Even under-fire Safa president Danny Jordaan has said he will “sit down” with the coach, which might not be a good sign for Broos after Bra Danny sommer sacked Shakes Mashaba for speaking out.
But come on, the man is right. We have helse problems.
We import players rather than give our youngsters opportunities in the PSL, with the lucky few developed in Europe.
Go and look at our U18 and U23 national teams and those manne hardly get game time at the top clubs.
Broos has moaned about the big three clubs in SA not having a homegrown goalkeeper.
Just wait until he starts about the lack of strikers, when no SA player has scored 20 goals in a PSL season since Siyabonga Nomvethe in 2011/12.
And he’ll be lucky if a South African even ends top of the goalscoring charts next season.
If Broos wanted to, he could find something new to complain about elke dag until his contract expires – that’s how sleg football in SA is.
I watch football almost all the time and I can tell you, watching PSL is hard work. Trying to figure out what teams are doing is guesswork most of the time.
What we can learn from the Belgian is to be more positively critical.
We have to be honest about our failings and work to be better.
It starts with players being professional.
The turnover of players seems to be as high as it’s ever been, with this recent transfer window seeing clubs let go of a vrag players at a time.
And as ever, coaches just get shuffled around every three months, with no time to implement ideas or anything.
Finally Safa and the PSL can do better with improving grassroot facilities for players, coaches and match officials.
Otherwise Broos won’t be the last coach to say that SA has no talent.