By Felix Durumbah, Abuja
After yesterday’s losing start to their first World Cup outing in about 20 years, being hit 2-0 by co-hosts Mexico, the mood inside South Africa temporarily shifted from xenophobic monitoring of African nationals for forced exits, to the match result, as the media tore their national team coach Hugo Broos, to shreds today.
Having topped Africa Group C, featuring, among others, Nigeria’s Super Eagles, Bafana Bafana automatically qualified for the World Cup on a high, exuding tonnes of optimism of a happy outing in this year’s mundial, being co-hosted by US, Mexico and Canada.
However, in the tournament’s first match, at Mexico’s iconic Azteca Stadium, the men from late Nelson Mandela’s country came crashing down with a reality check, suffering not just defeat without scoring a goal,but bagging two red cards in the process, highlighting the team’s on-match disciplinary attitude.
Instantly, and predictably, for a football-crazy nation, anger boiled. And,of course, someone must carry the can.
Who else but the 74-year-old Belgian coach Hugo Henri Broos, who reportedly earns €50,000 (about N79m) monthly.
Naturally, with the nation seething, newspapers in South Africa did a post-mortem on the match and most returned a verdict of guilty on the manager.
People&Politics undertook a virtual tour of some top newspapers in the country and discovered that their reports reflected the angry disappointment in the former apartheid enclave, presently battling with xenophobic tendencies.
‘Bafana’s World Cup shambles: Poor preparation, tactics leave SA on the ropes’ screamed the report in popular newspaper News24.
The paper’s reporter, Njabulo Ngidi, who covered the match live from Axteca, picked holes in Broos’ preparation for the World Cup.
The paper stated that this negatively affected output on the field of play.
Accusing the coach of possible sleight of the hand in his handling of vital preparation matters, the paper wrote that the coach, ahead the World Cup, rejected high profile friendlies against big teams which would have toughened Bafana.
The paper listed, for instance, games pencilled down against skillful Morocco, tough-tackling Cameroun and Saudi Arabia, pointing out that these were rejected by the coach on the ground that his team was “rebuilding and so it would be too early” to play some of those countries.
To the paper, “Those are the missed opportunities that came back to haunt Bafana at the Azteca Stadium.”
In stark contrast, the paper noted, Broos opted for ‘soft’ friendlies against relative minnows Panama, Nicaragua and Jamaica, noting that he did not even win all.
It reported that Bafana’s toughest friendly was against Cote d’Ivoire, which ended in a 1-1 draw.
It questioned the coach’s team selection for the Mexico match, stating that he played footballers, some of whom were playing together in a big match for the first time.
This technical failing, the report stressed, meant that individual ‘automatisms’, dynamics and what would have been natural mutual reactions to phases as the match progressed, were clearly lacking.
Xraying the match, the Sowetan, which,like News24, commands millions in readership, ran the headline ‘Five things Hugo Broos got horribly wrong in Bafana’s defeat to Mexico’.
It added the telltale rider ‘SA’s Belgian coach was found wanting as Bafana succumbed to World Cup opening day agony’.
The paper pointed fingers at the coach for poor team selection, bad match formation, being defensive-minded for an attacking team like the Bafana, and so on.
Similar anger was expressed by the Daily Maverick.
Under a kicker ‘Taking Stock’, the paper’s headline read ‘What went wrong for Bafana Bafana against Mexico and what they must change’.
Displaying a killer rider, it poured out a summary of the fans’ emotions: ‘Two red cards and zero goals. That’s the summary of South Africa’s first World Cup match in almost two decades’.
Penned by reporter Yanga Sibembe, the story directly accused the coach of fear.
The report read:”For SA, the pressure proved to be too much. SA’s longest-serving coach ever, Hugo Broos, showed fear in his team selection as he deployed a highly-defensive 3-5-2 formation.
“As someone who has previously played at the Azteca Stadium, perhaps Broos drew from his experience when deviating away from the 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1 formations he has generally trusted throughout his five years in SA.”
The paper added: “Maybe the hope from Broos and his technical team was that the more the match went on without the home side scoring, the pressure from the stands would shift to them.
“It backfired emphatically when Mexico, who are hosting the World Cup alongside the US and Canada, scored with less than 10 minutes played after a defensive lapse from Bafana Bafana.
“From then on, the plan to absorb pressure went out the window as the South Africans were forced to play. Which further exposed them defensively.”
Next up for the Bafana are the Czechs, who lost yesterday to South Korea.
*PHOTO CAPTION:A colleague comforts goalkeeper Williams after they lost to Mexico.
