Hugo Broos is hoping to lead South Africa to Cup of Nations glory in Morocco but standing in his team’s way in the last 16 on Sunday are Cameroon, the country with whom he won an unlikely continental title in 2017. The showdown at the compact Al Medina Stadium in Rabat has the makings of a fascinating contest between a Bafana Bafana side building towards the World Cup and a Cameroon team that entered the AFCON in disarray. Cameroonian football federation president and Indomitable Lions legend Samuel Eto’o sacked national team coach Marc Brys just weeks before the competition started, replacing him with David Pagou.
Brys had just overseen a play-off defeat against the Democratic Republic of Congo in the same Rabat stadium to which they will return this weekend. That ended their hopes of making the World Cup, but they have bounced back so far at the Cup of Nations, winning two and drawing one of three group matches. Broos, a Belgian compatriot of Brys, knows all about how dangerous Cameroon can be coming into an AFCON tournament to a backdrop of turmoil.
He led a makeshift Indomitable Lions squad, missing some of their biggest names who had refused to accept call-ups, to the title in Gabon in 2017. They beat Egypt 2-1 in the final to claim their fifth continental crown. “If you told someone before the tournament we would get to the final they would have laughed, but this for us was a big motivation,” Broos said at the time.
Read Full Article on The Witness
[paywall]
Fast forward nine years and his focus now is on improving on South Africa’s performance at the last Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast in 2024, when they reached the semi-finals and eventually finished third. Broos, now aged 73, has also led Bafana Bafana to qualification for the upcoming World Cup, their first appearance since hosting the tournament in 2010.
[/paywall]
