Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos says he is tempted to make changes and expects a tough clash as they will meet Algeria on Tuesday night. Broos says there will be no experimentation against Algeria as they target a positive result ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifiers.
Just last week, Bafana played to a dull draw against Andorra and will meet the Algerians on Tuesday to end their first-ever FIFA Series. The match will be hosted at the iconic Nelson Mandela Stadium and comes after a proverbial B team faced off against the European minnows, Andorra but the Belgian mentor is planning to back to his full-strength squad.
Bafana Coach to Make Changes Against Alegria
The 1996 African champions fielded a weakened side where they scored through Elias Mokwana.
“There will be lots of changes [for Algeria], I looked a bit at both games, and I think it was the best opportunity to give those guys,” said Broos. “The [inexperienced] guys to play last Thursday, it wasn’t a difficult opponent, even though the game ended up difficult.”
“But if you compare Andorra with Algeria, there is a lot of difference in quality, so we need to put our best team [forward] on Tuesday and we can’t afford to experiment again, it will be a different team – also players who didn’t play on Thursday, they won’t be tired. They will be fresh to play the game, we need that.”
BAFANA COACH EXPECTS A TOUGH DUEL AGAINST ALGERIA
After guiding Bafana to a third-place finish at the recent Afcon tournament in Ivory Coast, Broos added there is quality in the North African giants.
The Belgian led Bafana to a podium finish at the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations to bag their maiden medal in 24 years. In addition, the friendly comes ahead of the FIFA World Cup Qualifiers against Nigeria and Zimbabwe in June.
“It will be a difficult game certainly, we all know Algeria has a lot of quality, it was a disappointment for all Algerians to see them play at AFCON and out in the group stages already,” Broos added.
“They have much quality, I saw already the game they played on Friday against Bolivia, you see already the motivation of the players is different because it’s a new coach, they wanted to show him they deserve to be in the team, they deserve to play. So only for that the motivation will be big in the team of Algeria, playing at home, the supporters will be there.”
“It will be a good test for us again after AFCON and we’ll try to make a good result, but the performance is more important than the result. Even [though] we need victories to keep our ranking but yeah, it is what it is, it’s more important [to play well to prepare] for Nigeria and Zimbabwe in two months time – for those games there’s no excuses, we have to secure good results.”
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