South Africa head coach Hugo Broos admitted he made a mistake by fielding an ineligible player in their 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifier against Lesotho, reports Completesports.com.
Mamelodi Sundowns midfielder Teboho Mokoena featured for the Bafana Bafana in the 2-0 victory over the Crocodiles in March.
Mokoena had bagged two bookings in the qualifiers, and ought not to have played against Lesotho.
The mistake could now cost Bafana Bafana three valuable points in the qualifying series.
“If the decision is that we lose three points, then okay, we lose three points,” said Broos.
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“But look at the rules, there was no complaint.
“Honestly, we didn’t know Mokoena was suspended, and Lesotho didn’t know either.”
Broos continued: “There was no complaint. Why should we start doubting, being scared or afraid?
“We got a good result in Nigeria and we won in Benin.
“If it’s like that, we’ll fight on the pitch.”
By Adeboye Amosu
3 Comments
“But look at the rules, there was no complaint.”
Official complaints are only a formality. Rules are rules and will be applied.
If Lesotho is playing Southern African brotherhood with you, good for them. A policeman cannot turn a blind eye to an offender cos his closest neighbor tries to hide it while the other affected neighbors are protesting.
As far as I’m concerned, the table currently reads SA 10pts and Nigeria 7pts. After September 9, we’ll both be on 13pts officially.
Then in the last 2 matches after this window, we’ll properly deal with the conniving Lesotho at home for trying to be an enabler for SA and spoiler for us.
It was just that we had unserious tiktok content creator strikers (who barge into idle women’s chat group on social media) when we played them at home. And then Finidi took up a job he knew he was not yet ripe for to further out us in a precarious situation.
Nigeria cannot afford to lose to South Africa. Let’s focus on the games at hand instead of this idée fixe on point deduction.
When 3 points and 3 goals was deducted from nigeria in 2018 fifa world cup qualifiers, Algeria, Zambia and even ameroun didn`t protest for Fifa to caryy out their rules, we all woke up one day to read it on the news that 3point and 3 goals were docked from nigeria`s points…..
we`re still waiting for Fifa to do their homework before we take the matter to CAS….