Sundowns’ Mngqithi says Broos can criticise PSL if he is winning

Mamelodi Sundowns coach Manqoba Mngqithi says if Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos was winning his bigger matches he would have the right to strong opinions about the standard of the Premier Soccer League (PSL) and local players.

Broos questioned the standard of SA domestic football after Bafana’s flat 1-0 victory in a friendly with Botswana at FNB Stadium on Tuesday and went as far as saying some players were unlikely to play for the national team again.

Mngqithi did not dispute Broos’s opinion but argued the PSL is not as bad as the national team coach makes it out to be. Downs’ coach also suggested Broos does not always pick the best players the PSL has to offer. 

“To be honest, I wouldn’t want to comment much about Hugo Broos,” Mngqithi said on Thursday, as Downs prepared for the first leg of Saturday’s MTN8 semifinal against Orlando Pirates at Orlando Stadium.

“But the only thing that is always very important, and it gives you a little bit of licence to say whatever you want to say, is if you are winning matches.

“If you are not winning, there will always be question marks. As to whether SA is good enough or not good enough, I’m not sure because we know SA has achieved very good things in the past.

“We’ve had our national team qualifying for the Olympics, we’ve had our players doing well for many teams. We have had Sundowns competing fairly well in the continental space and locally.

“We have had a number of teams doing really well — such as Cape Town City; Pirates has done exceptionally well.”

The Sundowns coach suggested Broos may be selecting the wrong players.

“I believe there’s a very big pool of players you can choose from,” Mngqithi said. “But if you are choosing and you are not winning, and you are saying the team is not good enough, maybe when you are pointing fingers most fingers might be pointing in your direction.”

Mngqithi suggested that while Broos has won some games, the standard of opposition in some of those games was questionable.

“If [a coach is] winning matches, we are always willing to listen because it shows what he is trying to do. But the calibre of those matches becomes very important.”

Broos has threatened that the next Fifa break in November will be the last time he tries to reach out for a meeting with PSL coaches and blames the league for not passing his letter of request to coaches and clubs.

Mngqithi said Downs’ coaches would readily respond if Broos simply reached out to them directly.

“It would be nice to also know what he sees because his comments have always been all over,” Mngqithi said.

“We’ve never really said no to Hugo. Or maybe we must phone him to ask for a meeting because he has not called me to ask for a meeting with the coaches at Sundowns.”