{"id":20974,"date":"2025-12-12T10:41:02","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T08:41:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhb-webdevelopers\/channelafrica\/news\/bartlett-optimistic-bafana-bafana-will-do-well-in-afcon\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:32:09","slug":"bartlett-optimistic-bafana-bafana-will-do-well-in-afcon","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/bartlett-optimistic-bafana-bafana-will-do-well-in-afcon\/","title":{"rendered":"Bartlett optimistic Bafana Bafana will do well in AFCON"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: var(--global--font-secondary); font-size: var(--global--font-size-base);\">Despite the fact that Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos finds himself in hot water, former captain Shaun Bartlett believes the national team has the ability to improve on the third place achieved at last year\u2019s Africa Cup of Nations tournament in Ivory Coast.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Bartlett was a special guest at Bafana\u2019s official send-off at the First National Bank Stadium in Soweto earlier on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>They depart for this year\u2019s AFCON tournament in Morocco in a few days\u2019 time and Bartlett says Broos, who is in trouble for misogynistic comments made at media briefing in Pretoria on Wednesday, is responsible for the team\u2019s success in the last two years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think they have learned a lot at the particular tournament and over the last two years they have grown as a team as well. I think Hugo Broos and the squad have done tremendously well, the results speak for themselves and there\u2019s a lot of cohesion as well and combinations in the squad and I like the team that is going to the AFCON this time around and we just need to apply ourselves, listen to the coach\u2019s instructions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bafana Bafana training at the High Performance Centre in Pretoria as we build up to the Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco later this month.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;SABC&#8211;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":14530,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-20974","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Bafana Bafana training at the High Performance Centre in Pretoria.","published_date":null,"news_description":"Bafana Bafana training at the High Performance Centre in Pretoria.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/20974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/20974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24815,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/20974\/revisions\/24815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=20974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}