Johannesburg - Bafana Bafana begin their preparations for the upcoming Afcon qualifiers with two of the most difficult games they've played in recent years.
Coach Hugo Broos' boys travel to Europe for a date with Guinea in Belgium on Friday, and will thereafter tackle world champions France four days later in Lille.
Broos feels that his side's ability would and should be tested more by competing with top level teams and difficult games.
Bafana haven't qualified for Afcon since their exploits in Egypt in 2019, and their coach believes the upcoming friendlies will bode well for his group going forward.
ALSO READ: 'I hope it will stop' — Hugo Broos on Percy Tau's stop-start Bafana Bafana relationship
"I said it already, for me these are important games, difficult games, but I asked for difficult games. In the past I was told that it was not usual for South Africa to play tough friendly games," he said.
The South African national team are very rarely tested against the world's best with their long standing failure to qualify for the World Cup and inconsistent participation on a continental level as well.
Bafana do have rather fond memories of facing current world champions with their historical 1-0 victory over Spain in 2013 (who were both World and European champions at the time) still in the treasured moments of South African football fans.
That fixture, however, is also the last time Bafana faced a team in the top 30 of the Fifa world rankings, a worrying precedent when considering the aforementioned proposed vision of 2022, a vision that hasn't seen the light of day.
Coach Hugo Broos says he’s close to finding his best squad.
“Players from Pirates & Sundowns, I don’t have to speak about the quality.”
🇿![CDATA[]]>🇦 #BafanaBafana | @iDiskiTimes pic.twitter.com/Zm56jvEPbA
In comes Broos, into a seemingly ageing but unsuccessful team and the former Afcon winner with Cameroon looks set to do things his way, attempting to find a balance of experience and youth that will propel the national team into a more consistent figure.
"I'll be able to assess how strong my team is after these two friendly matches. After the World Cup qualifiers I felt as if we need more power, experience and quality and I think getting the likes of Goodman Mosele and Mothobi Mvala solves those problems for us because of their participation in continental competitions."
The Belgian international mentor spoke on MetroFM, blasted questions of the in-form duo of Andile Jali and Themba Zwane, citing age and unsuccessful history with the national team as his reasoning.
"I've heard too many questions about Jali and Zwane, they played in the qualifiers last year and we didn't qualify. Why did we not qualify if they're that good ?! ," he said.