The South African Football Association (Safa) announced Belgian Hugo Broos as the new Bafana Bafana coach on Wednesday after fan favourite for the job, Benni McCarthy, decided against joining the national team set-up because Safa wasn’t willing to meet his demands.

According to multiple local reports, Safa attempted to lowball the 43-year-old in the final stages of talks over personal terms and available budget.

McCarthy insisted that should he be appointed as Bafana boss he would want his two assistants at AmaZulu, Siyabonga Nomvethe and Vasili Manousakis, as well as goalkeeper-coach Moeneeb Josephs plus his video analyst to join him on a permanent basis. Safa countered this by stating the personnel could only be part time and called up for each national team camp.

McCarthy’s intention was to create a visible Bafana technical staff presence at PSL matches every weekend, as well as regular monitoring of the European-based players and that this players info would be recorded and updated on a weekly basis into a newly developed players database.

The federation, however, couldn’t give any assurances over McCarthy’s potential backroom staff, with the coach also reportedly feeling that the people in charge did not share his vision of how to restore Bafana as a continental powerhouse.

It’s also believed that Safa could not grant the budget Benni demanded. This despite Tebogo Motlanthe telling journalists in March that finances would not be an issue in the search for Molefi Ntseki’s replacement, but high-profile and potentially costly coaches on the level of Herve Renard and Carlos Queiroz could not be convinced to join Bafana, either.

This all led to the deal falling through and Safa turning to Belgian Broos, who guided Cameroon to Afcon glory in 2017.