Bafana Bafana head coach Hugo Broos has pointed out that not having players playing in Europe was a disadvantage following their AFCON exit.
Bafana were one of the teams that was dominated by local players in their squad in the current AFCON after having a successful AFCON in Ivory Coast when they finished with a bronze medal finish.
They managed to progress to the knockout stages of the AFCON after finishing in second place in their group, beating Zimbabwe and Angola then losing to Egypt.
Speaking to Newzroom Afrika, Broos mentioned that it is proven that not playing in Europe or in the highest challenging league is a disadvantage when it comes to tournaments like AFCON.
“You know as a national team you can do little on that because when you see all those teams that you mentioned now those are teams who have players playing in Europe, ” Broos said.
“We don’t have them, that is a disadvantage for South Africa even when you play against Angola, you play against players playing in Europe.
“I don’t speak about Cameroon. Cameroon have a brand-new team because they changed everything. When you see those players when they are playing, there’s a guy the striker [Christian] Kofane, he is playing for [Bayer] Leverkusen.
“He is 19 years old so these are the opportunities that our players must have because they have to be challenged more.
“I said from the beginning that the level of PSL compared to the level that we’ve had in the last weeks is very big.
“You can only make that gap smaller when you have players that are playing in very difficult competitions so let’s hope that players in the future are having more opportunities to go to Europe and to play in very difficult competitions and have those challenges because that should the team.
“It’s not just because you played once with Argentina or once with Ghana that’s suddenly your level will be up no.”
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