Broos must use these friendlies to decide Bafana Bafana's No 2

WHILE it may go a long way to calming nerves for Bafana Bafana debutants, coach Hugo Broos’ statement about giving all the players some minutes in the upcoming friendlies against Tanzania and Mozambique, must not apply to goalkeepers.

Bafana will play Tanzania at the Peter Mokaba Stadium on Friday at 7.30pm and follow up with neighbours Mozambique at Loftus Versfeld on Tuesday night.

These matches should not be confused with those of the A-side, also formerly known as Ama-Binneplaas, which is competing in the Cosafa Cup against Mozambique on Wednesday afternoon, Zimbabwe on Saturday and Mauritius on Tuesday.

Back to Broos’ squad, which is cautiously missing Mamelodi Sundowns players as they are preparing for the 2025 Fifa Club World to be played in the US from the 17th, there are three goalkeepers competing to start in the two friendlies - Orlando Pirates’ Sipho Chaine, Sekhukhune United’s Renaldo Leaner and SuperSport United’s Ricardo Goss.

With Ronwen Williams on Club World Cup duty, the door is open for these goalkeepers to elevate themselves to the national team's trusted number two shot stopper.

But with the Belgian mentor quoted this week saying:

“It is a great opportunity for the new players and also the young ones, there is no pressure. We are playing friendly matches, so the results are not that important. From my side, I will give every player the same playing time.”

Therein lies the problem. This approach will not help the coach and his technical team in zoning into who should be Williams official lieutenant.

 A good thing is that he himself, Broos understands this approach is quite tricky with goalkeepers, as he continued to say:

“It is a little bit difficult for goalkeepers, but even for them, we will try every keeper to play the same minutes and have a good camp.”

A free piece of advice to Broos is that he must not attempt this “giving every player the same playing time” when it comes to goalkeepers.

They must compete for the jersey and the best one of the bunch should start the first match, hands down.

There is a downside to letting players know that they share playing time; no one will ascend the top spot.

Yes from a common sense point of view, Chaine is supposedly the deputy to Williams currently, simply because of his performances with Pirates and his travels in the Caf Champions League.

But the 28-year-old has actually only played one match out of his eight in the Bafana matchday squad.

Goss on the other hand, has more experience with the national side, considering that he has even played in the Cosafa Cup and was part of the age group sides as a youngster.

So, as much as there is not so much of a debate as to who is the better performing shot stopper between Goss and Chaine at the moment, competition for Williams’ deputy is still very much wide open and giving out caps like Christmas presents will not help the Bafana cause.

Having a settled and trusted number two will help even Williams to up his game, or better yet, it will prevent head-scratching during those times when he is not available for unavoidable reasons such as injuries.

Broos must just have balls and start whoever shows more hunger among the three.