Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos was again pressed by the media for his continued snubbing of Mamelodi Sundowns players Andile Jali and Themba Zwane.
South Africa are preparing to play international friendly matches against Guinea on Friday next week, before meeting world champions France four days later in Lille.
The Belgian said he preferred Sundowns, Orlando Pirates and AmaZulu players for their experience from playing continental football as he justified the inclusion of Thabang Monare in his squad.
At 32, Monare is the oldest player in the Bafana squad and is the same age as Zwane, while Jali is 31.
“For once and for all, I’m very sorry… Since I’m here everybody is always talking about Jali and Zwane,” Broos told the media as per iDiski Times.
“I don’t have a comment on that. You know why they are not here, so I don’t have a comment on that, I will not repeat that every time. I’m very sorry but for me no comment anymore about Jali and about Zwane.
“You always have to try to increase the quality and to improve your team. We started in September. I said from the beginning I’ll try to build a young team but the door is not shut for the older ones.
“Look here on my left side [pointing at Thabang Monare], he’s the oldest player, he’s 32. So I never said the door is shut for those players. But when I came here I saw that the team was old and when you have an old team you don’t have a future. When we made the evaluation of the World Cup qualifiers, we saw that we missed something, we missed experience.
“I saw the performances of Sundowns, AmaZulu and Pirates in Confederation Cup and Champions League and when players perform at that level, I don’t think that you can keep them out of your team – they deserve to be there, they have the quality, they have the experience.”
Jali and Zwane are some of the experienced players in the Sundowns squad and have been top performers this season.
But Broos insists a younger squad is what he needs and hopes he will have a stronger squad.
“I hope that those guys will improve the quality and we’ll have a better team than two months ago,” Broos said.
“This process will go on but the goal of all this is to have 25 players and that 25 players will always be there. I hope that for the qualifiers for Afcon, I’ll have my team.
“After seven to eight months, doing scouting every week in the PSL and looking for players abroad, I hope now we’ll have a group of players who’ll start the qualifiers in June.”
The upcoming friendlies would be the first time Bafana returns to action since their 2022 Fifa World Cup hopes were upset by Ghana in November 2021.
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