{"id":500887,"date":"2026-02-24T11:39:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T11:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/500887\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T11:39:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T11:39:14","slug":"football-agent-basia-michaels-says-bafana-coach-hugo-brooss-comments-trampled-on-the-work-i-have-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/500887\/","title":{"rendered":"Football agent Basia Michaels says Bafana coach Hugo Broos’s comments ‘trampled on the work I have done’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Football agent Basia Michaels revealed that South Africa<\/a>‘s Mbekezeli Mbokazi<\/a> called her and offered support during the media storm caused by national team coach Hugo Broos’ comments over his move to Chicago Fire FC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Broos’ description of Michaels as a ‘nice little woman who is his agent and thinks she knows football’ meant that she was caught in the crossfire of the Belgian’s displeasure over Mbokazi’s choice of club<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Broos later publicly apologised for his choice of words, but denied allegations of racism and sexism<\/a> and, according to Michaels, the coach has not spoken to her privately.<\/p>\n

An attorney by trade, she bought QT Sports eight years ago from Tim Sukazi, who is now the owner of TS Galaxy<\/a>, and has no reservations confirming that Mbokazi’s move to Chicago Fire for around $3 million is to date the biggest she has handled.<\/p>\n

Michaels told ESPN that Broos’ comments felt degrading to a reputation she has worked years to build.<\/p>\n

She said: “What it does is: it does unfortunately trample on the work that I’ve done – not just the transaction with Mbokazi, but let’s call it the eight or nine years that I’ve been in this industry.<\/p>\n

“You can’t take away from that, whether you agree with something or you don’t agree with it.<\/p>\n

“It’s not the greatest feeling, but at the end of the day, everybody in this world is entitled to their own perception — but I’ve never had a single conversation with Hugo.”<\/p>\n

FIFA-accredited agent and attorney Basia Michaels stands with her client, defender Mbekezeli Mbokazi, at his unveiling with Chicago Fire.\u00a0Basia Michaels\/Instagram<\/p>\n

Michaels felt that while she had experienced sexism before, this was a unique experience due to the public platform on which it played out, without her being in the room to defend herself.<\/p>\n

Even when given the opportunity to, Michaels initially opted to stay quiet publicly as she sought to preserve the focus on the AFCON – where South Africa were eventually eliminated in the last 16 in Morocco<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“The focus had to remain the focus and the focus was definitely AFCON and that was a lot more important than anything else,” she said.<\/p>\n

Mbokazi has since said that it was difficult for him to deal with the constant scrutiny over Broos’ strong opinion<\/a> that he should have gone to Europe rather than MLS<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Michaels praised Mbokazi’s resilience and strong performances during AFCON, even under a cloud: “That (responding on the pitch) is the best way to do it.<\/p>\n

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“We had a conversation about it. It was actually quite lovely that he called me. He called me and asked: ‘Are you ok?’ I was like: ‘I’m fine. Are you ok?’ He was like: ‘Yeah.’… By then, the deal to Chicago Fire was done.<\/p>\n

“We both knew that it wasn’t an MLS 2 transaction. We had spent about six days in Chicago. When we got to the facility and we did everything that we had done, there was no question that it was an eye-opening experience for both of us.<\/p>\n

“This was a choice that he made. It’s not like we signed and then we went to Chicago. We did a full tour of Chicago start to finish, and then, he was like: ‘I’m going to stay.'”<\/p>\n

The publicity over Mbokazi’s move — both positive and negative — came at a pivotal point in Michaels’ career as she attempts to establish herself in the international market.<\/p>\n

She has often claimed that European clubs have a tendency to undervalue African players, but praised Chicago Fire’s attention to detail in their pursuit of Mbokazi.<\/p>\n

She said: “The first conversation I had with them was not anything to do with money. It was the basics of how he’s going to live life day-to-day. When they could give me certain assurances and tell me that they were going to put certain things in place, it didn’t matter the system that they had.<\/p>\n

“The system is great – it’s lovely. The U22 initiative has various different aspects that pertain to it, but for me, my focus was purely on the client that I have and how my client would benefit from certain requirements.”<\/p>\n

Mbokazi started on his MLS debut in a 2-1 away defeat to Houston Dynamo, making a goal-line clearance and block in quick succession shortly before half-time.<\/p>\n

He could make his home debut at Soldier Field against Montr\u00e9al on Saturday, Feb. 28 as the Men in Red look to bounce back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Football agent Basia Michaels revealed that South Africa‘s Mbekezeli Mbokazi called her and offered support during the media…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-500887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}