Mbekezeli Mbokazi’s agent Basia Michaels has broken her silence on Hugo Broos’ comments about the players’ move to the Major Soccer League, where the Bafana Bafana coach also hugely criticised the players’ representatives.
Broos, who has been a huge admirer of Mbokazi since his international debut, had questioned Mbokazi’s move to Chicago Fire and also slammed Michaels, saying she is “not clever” for brokering the deal to the MLS instead of getting her client a club in Europe.
“I know what happened, a woman who is his agent and think she knows football is doing what many agents are doing and thinking ‘how much can I get’. If she is a little bit clever, she knows there is AFCON and next year it’s World Cup, that there will be other teams, better for his career, to go to and not to Chicago,” Broos said at the time.
Michaels had been silent on the matter for long, but has now addressed Broos’ comments exclusively on the Behind the Boot podcast with Mazola Molefe.
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“For me I can tell you that there is no question about the fact that it was sexist,” she stated, adding that she doesn’t believe Mbokazi will be part of Broos’ upcoming Bafana squads.
“I’m not going to speak on behalf of Mbokazi, that he can do on his own. Yes, we had a conversation. We had a conversation even before Mbokazi signed.
“Mbokazi is confident that his playing ability will still keep him in the [Bafana] squad. I alongside many people currently we might not see Mbokazi in the squad, but that’s Hugo’s reality.
“My mother says this all the time, ‘she who plays the piper plays the tune’ and Hugo currently can make his decisions the ways he does, doing what he wants to do the way he does, selecting the players he wants to the way he does and there is very little what very of us can do.
“It doesn’t matter how well Mbokazi plays over the next four months, it really doesn’t because he’s made his dislike for the league known, which I think is very sad.
“But he’s the piper, he plays the tune, let him do it.”
Michaels also opened up on how Broos’ comments affected her personally, insisting she has never received an apology from the national team coach, while also revealing that Chicago Fire head coach Gregg Berhalter has tried to reach out to the Bafana coach to address the matter.
“What do I think about Hugo and his comments? I’m saddened by them, I must be honest with you,” she added.
“And yes, I didn’t note any kind of apology coming from Hugo. With all due respect more than anything else, he took to the stage with a statement and he then has this apology what he claims to be an apology but makes it about him and his family and what they had endured.
“I don’t think for a second he has thought abut what I had endured. And everything else, I mean all the social media comments, everyone who was in my inbox and everything else, I had to suck it up, I had to take it.
“The one thing I do want to say, Hugo has done so well for us as a country, there is no question about it. But I just don’t believe that in him doing as well as he has done allows him to be disrespectful in all the facets that he has been disrespectful – whether it’s to me, whether it’s to Mbokazi, whether it’s to Karabo, to Kaizer Chiefs, to Orlando Pirates…
“As South Africans, yes we’re grateful for how well Hugo has worked and how well he has done and great, really great, there is no question about it. But I don’t think in how well he has done, he has to lambast the rest of us.
“Have your opinion, because we all have our opinion. When you sit on a public platform and say ‘don’t quote me but MLS2’ is an absolute lie. When we did the deal to the MSL there is no question about MLS2, so I don’t understand why he would even think that. There is absolutely no truth about it.
“I know for a fact that the coach of Chicago Fire has tried to reach out to coach Hugo, and had had tried to maybe set the record straight, you can hear it from me, this is the plan we had for the player, this is what we want to do. I don’t think that conversation was had, but that’s not a Basia conversation to have.”