Revealed: Why Bafana Bafana didn’t deliver as expected in 2025 AFCON

Bafana Bafana finished third in the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) hosted and won by the Ivory Coast, who beat Nigeria in the final.

Hugo Broos’ men managed to get past the Democratic Republic of Congo to go home with bronze following their semi-final elimination in the hands of the Super Eagles.

This explains why the fans anticipated the country to do better in the 2025 edition hosted by Morocco. However, South Africa were not convincing, and despite making it out of the group, they fell to Cameroon’s Indomitable Lions in the Round of 16, crashing out.

The 74-year-old Belgian now argues the players’ minds had been set on the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which negatively impacted their performance in the biennial continental competition.

Broos explains Bafana Bafana’s AFCON struggles

“We know the reasons why [we had a bad AFCON]. This is not something that we can’t re-install. I always talk about the DNA of the team, it was not there. And either way, you can understand it because I felt it a week after we qualified for the World Cup,” he told MSW.

“Don’t forget that in two years, this team qualified for Ivory Coast [AFCON], Morocco [AFCON] and the World Cup, in two years.

“The main goal was going to the World Cup because it had been a long time. Everyone was focused on that without losing the two AFCONs before. But the moment we qualified for the World Cup [we took the foot off the pedal].

“That played a role afterwards, we were not focused enough on AFCON, we were not mentally ready, the DNA we showed in previous AFCONs and WC qualifiers wasn’t there,” Broos concluded.

Bafana Bafana are in Group A in the global competition alongside co-hosts Mexico, the Czech Republic, and the Republic of South Korea.