Hugo Broos

Hugo Broos is the unlikely hero of South African football. A former Belgian international defender (24 caps, member of the 1980 European Championship runner-up squad and the 1986 World Cup squad), he spent his playing career mostly at Anderlecht and Club Brugge. As a coach his early Belgian career was distinguished: two Belgian league titles at Club Brugge (1995-96 and 1997-98), two Belgian cups, a brief and unhappy spell at Anderlecht in 2001-02, and time at Trabzonspor in Turkey. He was widely viewed as a competent but unspectacular Belgian club journeyman well into his 60s, last seen at the modest KV Oostende in 2018-19.

Then came the Cameroon job in February 2016 — and the most improbable AFCON triumph of the modern era. Inheriting an indomitable Lions squad in disarray, with multiple senior players refusing call-ups, Broos selected a virtually unknown squad on the basis of physicality and hunger, and beat Egypt 2-1 in the 2017 final in Libreville. He became the first European to win the African Cup of Nations. The federation thanked him by firing him eight months later when Cameroon failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup — a bitter ending Broos has discussed publicly many times since. He went back to Belgium, took the Oostende job briefly, and seemed headed for a quiet retirement when SAFA approached him in May 2021.

The South Africa rebuild has been remarkable. Broos inherited a squad with no recent tournament experience and a federation hostile to selecting overseas-based players. He immediately picked a fight over selection policy, prioritising young domestic talent (Mbatha, Mokoena, Mofokeng, Appollis) and ruthlessly dropping veterans who didn’t meet his physical standard — including, controversially, captain Andile Jali. By AFCON 2023 in Côte d’Ivoire, the rebuild was bearing fruit: a semi-final loss to Nigeria on penalties, then a bronze medal via a 1-0 win over DR Congo in the third-place playoff. At AFCON 2025 in Morocco, despite what Broos himself called early “imposter syndrome,” Bafana finished third again. And the 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign — topping a group with Nigeria, Benin and Rwanda — sealed the picture.

Tactically, Broos plays a flexible 4-2-3-1 with Teboho Mokoena and Jayden Adams (or Sphephelo Sithole) as screeners, Ronwen Williams (his 2023 AFCON Player of the Tournament) behind, and the attacking quartet built around Mofokeng/Appollis pace on the wings, Themba Zwane’s vision underneath, and Lyle Foster (Burnley) at the point. He is openly, repeatedly clear about prioritising “power and physique” alongside technique. The signature trait, both at Cameroon and South Africa, is selection ruthlessness — he will drop a name player without hesitation, which is exactly what he did in mid-May 2026 when he initially omitted several Sundowns regulars from the 32-man preliminary list before reinstating them. At 74, this is unambiguously his final senior job. He has said publicly he will retire to Belgium after the tournament. The ceiling is the Round of 16, which would be South Africa’s first knockout-stage appearance since 2002. The floor is a respectable winless or one-draw group exit that nonetheless preserves the Broos legacy as the man who finally brought a coherent football identity back to Bafana Bafana.