{"id":439819,"date":"2025-12-11T09:52:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T09:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/439819\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T09:52:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T09:52:11","slug":"bafana-boss-hugo-broos-says-mbekezeli-mbokazi-should-have-gone-to-a-better-team-than-chicago-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/439819\/","title":{"rendered":"Bafana boss Hugo Broos says Mbekezeli Mbokazi should have gone to a ‘better team’ than Chicago Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Africa<\/a> men’s national team head coach Hugo Broos is not a fan of defender Mbekezeli Mbokazi<\/a>‘s move to Major League Soccer side Chicago Fire FC<\/a>, saying the Bafana Bafana youngster should have chosen a better team.<\/p>\n

Mbokazi, who is barely out of his teens, signed for Chicago from Orlando Pirates<\/a> earlier this month, and Broos, who recently named Mbokazi in his squad for the Africa Cup of Nations<\/a>, was displeased.<\/p>\n

Broos said to the media: “I’ll tell you what I think, no [it’s not a good move], what is he going to do there?<\/p>\n

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“It’s not even a cup team in America, if my info is right, he’s going to play in the MLS<\/a> 2 at the second team of Chicago, I don’t know if it’s true, I’ll ask him when I see him. That’s even worse.<\/p>\n

“But I know what happened, that woman who’s his agent [Basia Michaels] and thinks he knows football is doing what many agents are doing. It’s how much they can get.<\/p>\n

“If she’s a little bit clever, she should know that AFCON and World Cup are coming next year, there could have been better teams that he can go to and not Chicago.”<\/p>\n

Not everyone is as critical of the move to the US, with Pirates winger Oswin Appollis<\/a> saying that the deal will motivate other players in South Africa to work harder and earn moves overseas.<\/p>\n

Appollis said, per FarPost<\/a>: “It’s a motivation for all the players. It took him, I think, a year or nine months for him to get the move. He deserves it.<\/p>\n

“As you can see, as young as he is, he’s a grown man, technical, defending and everything. I just want to wish him all the best. He deserves it, and I know he will do well in Chicago.”<\/p>\n

Mbokazi will link up with The Men in Red after the AFCON in Morocco<\/a>, which runs from Dec 21 2025 to Jan 18 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Africa men’s national team head coach Hugo Broos is not a fan of defender Mbekezeli Mbokazi‘s move…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":439820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,5386,1818],"class_list":{"0":"post-439819","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-illinois"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}