Riveiro Settles Makgopa Vs Mabasa Debate, In Common With Broos? |

Photo by Daniel Hlongwane/Gallo Images

After former Orlando Pirates head coach Jose Riveiro was asked about whether he would be open to coaching Bafana Bafana post the Hugo Broos era, Soccer Laduma looks at three traits the two coaches have in common.

Belief in youngsters

The future success of any team lies with the quality of young players and both coaches have shown willingness to give young talent opportunities, Broos showing the way with the likes of Oswin Appollis while Riveiro is credited for unleashing the likes of Relebohile Mofokeng and Mohau Nkota to the main stream.

Read: Riveiro Addresses Questions Around Mofokeng

Discipline

The Bafana players when they talk about how Broos changed the fortunes of the national team, they always mention discipline, on and off the pitch, where there is no player bigger than team.

Riveiro has shown at Pirates that he can control the dressing room and manage big stars, with some of the glimpses of his man-management seen on the Pirates documentaries.

Loyalty

Both Broos and the Spanish coach were consistent in choosing striker Evidence Makgopa, over Tshegofatso Mabasa, despite his higher scoring ratio.

The former Al Ahly coach recently explained why he insisted on playing Makgopa more over Mabasa.

“Evidence is a player with a lot of mobility, with the capacity to move the centre-backs to places where they are not really feeling comfortable, he’s provoking and helping to create different type of spaces for players around him,” Riveiro said on 947’s MSW.

“He’s a player who can make a big difference when he has a space to run, when he’s playing far from the goal. I think Mabasa is a different profile in that sense. He’s a player is much more comfortable close to the box, always with a goal in his mind, which is something important in our business.

“Different types of profiles, depending on the team and ideas of a coach, (they) can play together but during our time we used them (based) on their strengths,” the 50-year-old coach added.

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