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Bafana Bafana players celebrate after scoring.
Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos says despite his team having already qualified for next year’s Africa Cup of Nations, he will not interfere much with his starting eleven because the aim is to finish top of the group.
They will host bottom-of-the-group South Sudan at the Cape Town Stadium on Tuesday evening, in their final Africa Cup of Nations qualifying match. Broos says their mission is clear and simple, and that is to try and win every match they play. The game will also mark the 50th cap for Bafana Bafana keeper and captain Ronwen Williams.
Bafana Bafana qualified for next year’s Africa Cup of Nations tournament in Morocco with two games to spare. They went top of Group K after a 2-nil win against Uganda in Kampala, on Friday afternoon.
South Africa has 11 points, one more than second-placed Uganda. In the first leg encounter against South Sudan, Bafana Bafana came from a goal down to win 3-2 against the Bright Stars.
72-year-old Broos says he will not interfere too much with his winning combination because there’s still a lot to play for in their final qualifying match.
“I don’t like taking this game as a friendly game and you know when you start changing everything that means also that players yes look, he is changing six or seven players, so I don’t want this. I meant what I said in the beginning, I mean it we want to be first and we try to put our best team tomorrow on the pitch.”
In their Afcon qualifying campaign, Bafana Bafana are unbeaten in five matches, having registered three wins with two draws. They have scored 13 goals and conceded five, and Broos says he will only be satisfied if they finish top of their group.
“I think you are looking at two very happy men after our qualifying game against Uganda. On the other hand, you are looking at two men who are still not satisfied. Satisfied because we want to win the game of tomorrow, this is not a friendly game for us it’s an important game because we want to be first in the group,”
Bafana Bafana captain Ronwen Williams will reach an important milestone in his playing career for the national team. The 32-year-old keeper says he still remembers his debut game for the senior national team, back in 2014 against the mighty Brazil, where he conceded five goals at the FNB Stadium.
“I think the most important game for me was the first game which was against Brazil even though we lost 5-nil, I still have so many memories that game gave me so much, that’s probably the reason I’m where I am today because I had to persevere. I was called many names, and it made me stronger at such a young age. You know, I think I was 22-years old and there were so many doubts for many years. That game at such a young age turned me into a man,”
Williams says he’s not surprised with Bafana Bafana’s impressive run under Broos. He says the only blemish so far was when they failed to qualify for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
“Definitely, even the last world cup campaign qualifiers that we had we were a few minutes away from qualifying, we all know what happened when we played Ghana, and we had such a great qualifying campaign. I think we went undefeated until the last game, we scored, and we didn’t concede many and that’s where the turnaround started for Bafana Bafana,”
This will be Bafana Bafana’s first game in Cape Town in nine years. The last time Bafana Bafana played in Cape Town was in an international friendly against Angola, where they won 2-1.
