Broos highlights Bafana’s biggest disadvantage after AFCON exit

Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos feels not having many players in top leagues in Europe is part of the reason they were knocked out of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations.

Broos and his players returned home on Wednesday following their elimination by Cameroon at the Round of 16 on Sunday and as they begin to evaluate where it all went wrong, the tactician has an immediate answer.

South Africa were the team with the most local-based players with 17 of the 25 players selected by Broos plying their trade in the PSL and while that was highlighted as a major strong point when they finished third at AFCON 2023, the 73-year-old feels it is a major disadvantage.

Lack of exposure hurting Bafana

“You know as a national team you can do little on that because when you see all those teams that you mentioned now those are teams who have players playing in Europe,” Broos told Newzroom.

“We don’t have them, that is a disadvantage for South Africa even when you play against Angola, you play against players playing in Europe.

“I don’t speak about Cameroon. Cameroon have a brand-new team because they changed everything. When you see those players when they are playing, there’s a guy the striker [Christian] Kofane, he is playing for [Bayer] Leverkusen.

Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos says the team was at a disadvantage because some of the teams that were at the AFCON have most of their players playing in European leagues. He says SA players need to get the opportunity to go to Europe and be challenged more. @Yolulwe_Qoshe… pic.twitter.com/YBRloVTqc6

— Newzroom Afrika (@Newzroom405) January 7, 2026

“He is 19 years old so these are the opportunities that our players must have because they have to be challenged more.”

PSL level-players inferior to the rest

Broos insists having many PSL players in the national team is giving fans and the country a false sense of pride when they actually need more in the top leagues in Europe.

“I said from the beginning that the level of PSL compared to the level that we’ve had in the last weeks is very big,” he added.

“You can only make that gap smaller when you have players that are playing in very difficult competitions so let’s hope that players in the future are having more opportunities to go to Europe and to play in very difficult competitions and have those challenges because that should help the team.

“It’s not just because you played once with Argentina or once with Ghana that’s suddenly your level will be up, no.”