Cape Town - Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos longs to see Percy Tau, aka the ‘Lion of Judah’, playing at his best.
The Belgian tactician would have loved to include Tau in his teams for friendlies against neighbours Mozambican at Mbombela Stadium tomorrow (8.30pm kick-off) and Angola on Sunday (2pm).
“Percy played a few games with us, but I’ve never seen Percy at 100%,” said Broos.
“He was always recovering from an injury when I saw him in action. We cannot say that in the games he played with us that we saw the best of Percy Tau.
“I hope that he starts playing with whomever, because we can use a player like Percy in our team. As a coach, you must be happy when you have a good Percy Tau in your team, because he will help us a lot.
“However, for the moment, we can’t talk about the best Percy Tau. At this time, that is just impossible because he doesn’t play regularly for his club in Egypt.”
The injury-prone Tau has had a year from hell, with a succession of injuries that robbed him of gametime. He was brought to Al Ahly two seasons ago when Pitso Mosimane was the coach there.
After Mosimane’s departure, there were calls for Al Ahly to sell Tau, but the club has continued with him.
Two weeks ago, he was called up to the match-day squad for the Egyptian Super Cup final against bitter rivals Zamalek in Abu Dhabi. Tau remained on the substitutes’ bench as his team ran out 2-0 winners.
Broos has urged Tau to consider changing clubs so that he can play at a team where he is more likely to feature than warm the substitutes’ bench.
“He is not 100% now. Although he is fit to play, he does not get enough minutes,” said Broos.
“He has to play most of the time. Let’s hope if he does not succeed and get a regular position at Al Ahly, that in January, he finds another team where he can play.
“When you see what happened with Percy in the last year. He went from one injury to another, and then went through his recovery.
“Later, he would play two or three games and was again injured. He didn’t play for us because of injuries against Ethiopia and France.
“We will all be very happy to see that with Al Ahly or another team so that we can have a 100% Tau in March for the two Africa Cup of Nations qualifying matches against Liberia.
“I don’t think it is a good plan to take Percy now, because he is not 100%.
“We did select Tau before when not 100%, but you saw his performances against Ghana in September last year and again in November. That was not Percy at 100%.”
@Herman_Gibbs