Bafana Bafana’s preparations for tomorrow night’s highly-anticipated 2026 Fifa World Cup qualifier against Nigeria hit a speed bump on Wednesday when their flight to Uyo was delayed.
Scheduled to leave South Africa from OR Tambo at 9am on Tay morning, Bafana’s media team sent out a statement reading: “Kindly note that flight is delayed by an hour and a half.”
However, it wasn’t until 12.45pm (nearly four hours later) that they sent another message saying: “And we are off!”.
The delay would have had an impact on coach Hugo Broos’s plans, but Bafana would do well to focus on the task at hand and that is to beat the team that knocked them out of the African Cup of Nations at the semifinal stage earlier this year.
But despite Nigeria captain Ahmed Musa saying earlier in the week that Bafana will be out to avenge that loss, Broos says that’s not the case.
The coach says: “We just want to have a good result against Nigeria, we don’t think about revenge or whatever.
“It’s a totally different game, we are playing to qualify for the World Cup.
“Losing this game would not really be a disaster because after this, you still have six to play.
“But we’d rather not have a defeat in Nigeria.”
He then warns Nigeria: “We know about them, but they know about us also. They know now how strong we are. We have to use our status as the third best team in Afcon.
“But it will be different... they have a new coach now and play a bit different than in Afcon.
“It’s up to us to do the same thing [we did in the Afcon clash], but now with a victory.”