Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos was left happy after he led his team to a 2-1 win over a highly-ranked Morocco in an Africa Cup of Nations qualifier in front of more than 57 000 people at the FNB Stadium in Nasrec, Johannesburg, on Saturday evening.
Morocco’s Atlas Lions went into the match as favourites to put one over the South Africans. However, it was never to be as Bafana turned the tables on them and ran away with the three points.
Bafana opened the scoring in the fifth minute through Atlas Lions goalkeeper Munir El Kajoui’s own goal and Zakhele Lepasa made it 2-0 in the 48th minute before Hakim Ziyech scored for the 2022 FIFA World Cup semi-finalists on the hour mark.
“I don’t have to tell you that I’m very, very happy, not only because we won the game. I think we deserved to win the game. The chances we had. I’m more happy about the performance. I said it before the game the result is not important, I’d like to see a performance, I’d like to see the progression we made in the last months,” Broos said.
“I think we agree you saw a team that made enormous progression in the last months. We played against a very good team. We were never dominated, never. We had three, four very good chances to score. If I remember maybe one or two for Morocco.”
Both Bafana and the Atlas Lions went into the match having already qualified for the AFCON tournament, which is going to be played in Ivory Coast between January and February next year.