Hugo Broos, the coach of Bafana Bafana, is aiming for maximum points in their upcoming 2022 Qatar Fifa World Cup qualifier against Zimbabwe next month.
A victory for Bafana against the Warriors, who have been ousted from the World Cup qualification campaign following three consecutive defeats, would put South Africa on the edge of reaching the final World Cup qualifying stage.
Bafana Bafana will enter that critical home encounter on the heels of three straight triumphs in which they scored five goals and surrendered only one, while Zimbabwe will be searching for their first win of the qualifiers.
“I am looking at players playing with the combinations like they did against Ghana, I am expecting them to show character like they showed against Ethiopia and I think we have a great chance to finish top in our group.
“I know the situation as it is now, in one month we have to go again with a one-point lead and that means Ghana has to win their next match against Ethiopia. There is no other solution for them.
“But first of all, for us it is to deal with Zimbabwe and I hope that my colleague (Ethiopia coach Wubetu Abate) will give a little present next month by beating Ghana to make things easy for us.”
Bafana Bafana played in front of around 2,000 supporters, and Broos stated that he would want to have more versus Zimbabwe.
“With regards to the fans, we really hope that for the next game against Zimbabwe there will be more fans in the stands. This is because if you have a bad moment in the game and you have the fans behind you, they will back you and give you energy.
“In this game we had about 2,000 fans inside FNB Stadium and maybe by the time we take on Zimbabwe it will be 10 times more because that will definitely be fantastic for the players.”
Broos went on to say that he was relieved that the two games against Ethiopia were done since they had extremely strong midfielders.
“This was a game I was a little bit afraid of, because we knew that this is a very good team, especially in the midfield. We tried to neutralise them in the midfield but we did not really succeed.
“The danger was always there and it was very difficult for us to keep the ball. We suffered a little bit, but on the other side we could score on the set-piece, and it is something that we knew there would be possibilities for us.
“This is the most important thing, to have a win and stay first in our group after four games and this is what we wanted to achieve. We had an awful trip to Ethiopia last week but the boys were fantastic and their mentality was good.
“The trip to Ethiopia was still in the legs of the boys and you saw it in the match. We didn’t neutralise their good midfield and we suffered, but I can’t blame the players because they fought for 90 minutes and they wanted victory.”