Emotional Broos hails Williams and Bafana after win over Cape Verde

Hugo Broos sounded moved by the spectacular fight displayed by his team despite admitting they produced their worst performance of the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) in beating Cape Verde on penalties in Saturday night’s quarterfinal.

Broos, who has seen his rebuilding project with the grossly underachieving South Africans culminate in a first Nations Cup semifinal in 24 years, made special mention of captain fantastic Ronwen Williams.

The 32-year-old Mamelodi Sundowns goalkeeper and SuperSport United youth product made an amazing four saves from five penalties as SA won the shoot-out 2-1 at Stade Charles Konan Banny in Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast.

Full and extra time ended 0-0 but were dominated by the islanders, who spurned countless chances, with Williams also getting a match-saving stop onto the woodwork when substitute Gilson Benchimol went through one on one in the fifth minute of stoppage time of normal time.

“Let’s say six hours ago I was 71, now I’m 75,” Broos said.

“It was a very stressful game. Certainly with penalties you never know what will happen.

“It [penalties] is a very special situation for the players. Sometimes if you have a little game after training taking penalties and no player misses, [that is great,] but you saw tonight what happened, not only with us, but also the Cape Verde players. 

“We were not lucky, because we had a very good keeper tonight. If you can save four penalties that is not luck anymore. One [can be luck], but not four.

“And it is not only that — he saved us two minutes before the end too with the player who was alone in front of him.

“So yes, he was man of the match it seems,” Broos said with a chuckle. “You could not choose anyone else because he is really the man of the match.”

The coach admitted his team lacked fluency, often having to scramble in defence as a fired-up Cape Verde ran the South Africans ragged.

Bafana’s fighting spirit at the Nations Cup, though, ultimately prevailed, with a dose of luck.

The South Africans battled back from an opening 2-0 defeat against Mali in the group stages to qualify as runners-up with a 4-0 win against Namibia and 0-0 draw against Tunisia.

In the last-16, against Africa’s top-ranked team, Walid Regragui’s crack 2022 World Cup semifinalists, Morocco, Bafana also had some fortune go their way with some of the officiating and a late penalty miss by Achraf Hakimi. The South Africans were far more fluent in attack in that game, and structured in defence, than against Cape Verde.

The islanders had beaten Ghana, Mozambique and Mauritania and drawn with Egypt in Ivory Coast.

Many pundits believed SA would have a tougher game against Cape Verde. They were ranked lower than the world 66th, and African 12th Bafana, on 73rd and 14th, respectively, and far less intimidating on paper than Morocco — but the West Africans were enjoying excellent form.

And so it proved, Bafana often clawing themselves into keeping the scoreline goalless.

“Our match was not so good. We played our worst game of the tournament,” Broos said. “We played better against Mali, Tunisia, and Morocco.

“Tonight, this was not the team we saw in the previous weeks. For some players it was maybe a new experience, and maybe the pressure and the nerves played a role.

“And maybe for Cape Verde it was different — they had nothing to lose. Even though I’m sure they are very sad now. But for us there was more to lose. And that, played into the hands of their players and we didn’t play as freely [as in our previous games].

“But … it’s not the way you win, it’s that you win. And tonight we won on penalties and we are very happy.”

Williams became the second Bafana goalkeeper after Andre Arendse in 1996 to keep four consecutive clean sheets at Nations Cup finals.

SA meet nemesis Nigeria in their semifinal at Stade de la Paix in Bouaké on Wednesday (7pm SA time). Ivory Coast meet Democratic Republic of the Congo in Abidjan at 10pm. The final is on Sunday.