South Africa head coach Hugo Broos has confirmed he will retire from coaching after the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico, Afrosport reports.
The 73-year-old Belgian had long insisted he will call time on his coaching career after the Mundial and might have done so earlier had Bafana Bafana not automatically qualified for the finals after Tuesday’s 3-0 over Rwanda in Mbombela.
Broos, whose coaching career started in 1988 and played for Belgium at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, will also lead South Africa at the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco in December.
“Don’t ask me what my emotions are for the moment; I don’t have words for them,” he said. “I hoped, maybe more than anyone in this group, players or staff, that we should go to America, because for me it is a sentimental reason.
“You all know I was at the World Cup at the end of my career as a player and now I do it again as a coach.
“I think this is the right moment next year, after the World Cup, to stop my coaching career and go spend the next 20 years with my children and grandchildren.
“But first of all, there is work to do, and we will try to do it well.”
Broos coached Club Brugge, Royal Mouscron, Anderlecht and Genk in his native Belgium between 1988 and 2008 before managing Panserraikos in Greece and Trabzonspor in Turkey between 2008 and 2010.
He returned to Belgium to manage Zulte Waregem briefly during the 2010-11 season before moving to Algeria to coach JS Kabylie and NA Hussein Dey.
✅ Qualified for 2023 AFCON
✅ Qualified for 2025 AFCON
✅ Qualified for 2026 World Cup
🥉 First AFCON medal in 23 yearsHugo Broos is HIM! pic.twitter.com/q3JfweFsSs
— iDiski Times (@iDiskiTimes) October 15, 2025
He became a national team coach for the first time with Cameroon between 2016 and 2017 before taking over the South Africa job in 2021.
