South Africa senior men’s football team coach Hugo Broos has apologized for saying the truth perhaps at the wrong time after Bafana Bafana had lost 2-1 away in Morocco days ago.

Lat week, Broos had said Bafana Bafana lack quality players that can compete at the highest level.

The Belgian said this during a press conference last Tuesday while reflecting on his team’s loss to Morocco in the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers.

“What is the real problem of South Africa? The real problem in South Africa is that we don’t have those quality players,” the AFCON-winning coach said.

“We don’t have those players like our last three opponents, Ghana, France, and Morocco have. When you see those teams, Ghana, 90% of the players are from Europe.”

He added: “I don’t have to explain which players are playing in the team of France. All players are in big teams in Europe. We don’t have those quality players who are playing in Europe.”

However, the Belgian’s brutal and honest truth did not massage the egoes of some powerful forces in South Africa who have now pressurized the coach to apologise.

SABC Sport reports that Broos apologized at the South African Football Association’s extraordinary congress on Saturday.

“I want to apologise if my declaration in the press conference last Tuesday was disrespectful against this nation. This was not my intention, certainly not,” he is quoted saying,

“We have to make it more professional – and I am just talking out of my experiences that I have. I am European, and in Europe, things are different than here in Africa. But I also have the African experience, I worked two years in Cameroon, and when I compare this country with Cameroon – the potential is 10 times more.”

South Africa won AFCON in 1996 and since that year the national team’s performance has been on the wane.

For all the world class infrastructure that enabled South Africa to host the 2010 World Cup, the country does not have a well-known player in Europe’s top teams and leagues.