South Africa head coach Hugo Broos appears to be regarding Thursday’s 2022 World Cup qualifier against Zimbabwe as the most important match for him since arriving in the country in May.
Bafana and The Warriors lock horns at FNB Stadium at 9pm. SA, who are at the top Group G, face second-placed Ghana in the last pool match away on Sunday.
Bafana are on 10 points, one ahead of Ghana’s Black Stars who face Ethiopia at Orlando Stadium at 3pm today. Ethiopia and Zimbabwe are already out of the race.
“We have two big matches in front of us. From the two games, tomorrow’s one [the one against Zimbabwe tonight ] is the most important. We all know that if we don’t win against Zimbabwe we can be in trouble before we go to Ghana,” said Broos in a media conference at FNB Stadium yesterday.
“Therefore, the victory against Zimbabwe is very important. Again, I must say that it’s a very tricky game. First of all, Zimbabwe are our neighbours and neighbours also want to win against you, so I think Zimbabwe will want to win even when they’re out of the race because they play against SA.”
The 69-year-old SA trainer also cautioned his troops against underestimating The Warriors particularly because the bulk of their squad are inexperienced players who ply their trade locally. Skipper Knowledge Musona and defender Teenage Hadebe were ruled out of the match because of injuries.
“If you see their squad there are a lot of locally-based players, so I think the coach [Norman Mapeza] will try something to use the game to train for Afcon… he’ll try and see which players will go with him to Afcon in January. Players will be wanting to prove something to their trainer,” said Broos.
“However, the biggest error we can make is to take them lightly. We must not underestimate them at all.”
