Bafana Bafana defender Thapelo Morena has opened up on how coach Hugo Broos used their past painful experience to motivate them to seal early qualification to the Africa Cup of Nations.
South Africa secured their ticket to AFCON 2025 with two matches to spare before they went on to beat Uganda to move top of their group and will take on South Sudan in Cape Town on Tuesday looking to end the qualification phase unbeaten.
Morena says Broos reminded the players of the importance of finishing the job early following their failure to seal a ticket to the 2022 World Cup, when Ghana edged them out, while the players had the hunger for more after their impressive third place finish at AFCON 2023.
“He even once spoke about I think the World Cup, the World Cup game [qualifier] against Ghana when we played away,” the right-back told iDiski Times.
How did Broos motivate Bafana Bafana stars?
“So, it’s some of the things that he is showing us that there are possibilities and there’s also disadvantages because if we are going to try to fight to the last game, things might happen. If we do it now, you know automatically we have everything in our hands.
“Also, as players, we know how football is. So, we are also trying our level best to put our minds right and obviously there’s no one who doesn’t want to go to the AFCON after the experience we had. So yeah, I think that’s the most important thing.
“But what he also spoke about is never taking whatever happened in previous games into a new game because it’s a different game and we have to win.”
South Africa have won three and drawn two of their five qualifiers and will face South Sudan in a more relaxed mood although Broos has insisted they must take every match seriously.
