Ugly but effective ... Broos’ pragmatism carries Bafana into AFCON knockouts

It was not pretty! At times it descended into the clumsy. Yet, as uninspiring as Bafana Bafana were, they got the result that mattered. South Africa’s 3-2 victory over Zimbabwe in their final round-robin match in Group B of the Africa Cup of Nations was good enough to send them into the knockout stages.

It is the Hugo Broos way. Pragmatic. Just get the job done and do not bother about the fancy stuff. After all, did multiple Premiership championship-winning coach Gordon Igesund not say it perfectly? “There’s no room for comment in the results column.”

For sure, the South African football purists will be complaining about how untidy Bafana were. They will lament the central defensive pairing's inefficiencies that could be punished by much better opponents. They will cry that the team needed a Relebohile Mofokeng to come on and fire up an attack that was as blunt as a butter knife. Perhaps so!

This is tournament football, though. And here, it is all about getting through to the next round. Nkosinathi Sibisi said it well in the pre-match media conference: “I think the biggest lesson we’ve taken away from the tournament is that ‘it is not how you do it, you just have to do it’. You have to get a result, and we fought well against Angola and we were able to get a 2-1 victory.”

They fought well against a Zimbabwean side that was always going to be a tough nut to crack to get the 3-2 victory that sees them through to the Round of 16. Tshepang Moremi’s opener may have come via a fortuitous bounce off a Zimbabwean defender’s foot to beat Washington Arubi, but they all count.

Yes, Lyle Foster slotted home his second of the tournament thanks to a suicidal back-pass by Divine Lunga, but the Burnley striker was alert to the opportunity and he should be praised for that. Oswin Appollis was spot on from the spot-kick after a deliberate handball by a Zimbabwean defender.

That is how football matches are won — by punishing the opponents for their mistakes. Yes, there were moments when Bafana were so poor defensively that they needed Ronwen Williams to come to their rescue. And the skipper did, just as a goalkeeper should — lead from the back.

That own goal by Aubrey Modiba summed up Bafana’s defensive frailties; they were caught out of position on numerous occasions, finally being punished for facing their own goal. The lack of attacking fluidity, particularly in the first half when Sipho Mbule was just not "cooking" like the Master Chef he is supposed to be, is a worry. We just were not great at penetrating the Zimbabwe defence.

Those are things Broos and his technical team will have to work on fixing before the next match. And, what South African fans complaining that Bafana were not convincing should remember, is that sometimes the quality of opposition contributes to how a team plays. Yes, good teams must always find a way to dominate their adversaries.

But I am of the view that when playing the likes of Cameroon and the Ivory Coast — potential opponents in the next round — Bafana will play much better.

Yet, it would be folly to expect them to be all finesse and entertainment. Not under Hugo Broos. The Belgian septuagenarian has never given us a great, entertaining match. He is a practical coach who knows that the game of football is all about putting the ball in the opposition net more than they do into yours. Period.