Mngqithi blames Broos for Bafana’s AFCON failure – ‘I don’t think he was as focused’

Golden Arrows coach Manqoba Mngqithi has blamed Bafana Bafana boss Hugo Broos for not being focused during the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations.

South Africa exited the tournament at the Round of 16, following a 2-1 loss to Cameroon, a disappointing return given they were hoping to go one better after making the semi-final of the 2023 edition.

A number of issues have been cited for Bafana Bafana’s poor AFCON campaign but Mngqithi has laid the blame on Broos, who he says did not make the correct calls during the match against Cameroon, leading to the defeat.

Mngqithi identifies Broos’ mistake at AFCON

“Hugo did a lot well that we have to commend him for but in this AFCON, I don’t think he was as focused as he was in the previous AFCON,” Mngqithi said on Prime Time Sports on UKhozi FM as quoted by iDiski Times.

“The mistakes he made in this one were elementary ones because I think he is a top coach.

“If I can make an example with the Cameroon game. He made a mistake by benching two players who had played impressively before – Moremi and Modiba.

“Before the game, I was thinking that we would need to have people that would exploit the space behind Cameroon. Moremi would have been the best candidate for that because we knew that Cameroon would try to come at us.

Bafana Bafana paid for their wastefulness

“We should have had a plan that if they come at us and we want to hit them with a counter, we must know what we have behind their defence.

“It showed when Modiba put in two good balls into the box, Mudau or Foster should have scored one of them. But the truth is I think in this tournament, we were not beaten, we beat ourselves.”

In the match against his former side, Broos opted to play a three-man defence in an effort to mirror the Indomitable Lions’ system and South Africa started well before fading off.

Bafana Bafana had three great chances in the opening eight minutes through Lyle Foster, Relebohile Mofokeng and Samukelo Kabini but wasted all of them before defensive mistakes allowed Cameroon to score late in the first half and early in the second.