South Africa have struggled to find form in recent 2025 AFCON qualifiers. Despite late comebacks against Uganda and South Sudan, head coach Hugo Broos has attributed the team’s inconsistent performances to a lack of competitive match experience.
Many of the Bafana Bafana players have been limited to pre-season friendlies, as the domestic league in South Africa has yet to begin. Broos believes that this lack of match sharpness has contributed to the team’s subpar performances, particularly against South Sudan.
While acknowledging individual errors, Broos emphasized that the team’s overall performance has been affected by the lack of competitive football.
“First of all, I said it before or at the beginning of the week: the big trouble we have now at this moment is that our players didn’t play competitive games,” said Broos.
“The 80% of the players played only the pre-season friendly games, and we saw that in both games. We are not sharp enough.
“This is not South Africa that we knew from other games. This is the first thing, the second thing, individual mistakes can always happen.
“But now, with two games, we have made individual mistakes. The second goal against Uganda was a mistake, and today, the two goals of Sudan were two mistakes, two defensive mistakes we made.
“So, this is something we have to do better in the next game, certainly next month against Congo [Brazzaville], and I’m sure that it will be because my players at that moment will have more competitive games because this week the competition starts in South Africa.
“And I think that was the biggest problem South Africa had for the past two games that we didn’t have competitive games. There was a lack of sharpness in our game.”