Salmon swims with injury tide

Glen Salmon is a happy man, despite the end of his World Cup dream. Tendonitis of the knee has ruled the SuperSport striker out for three months, effectively ending his distant hopes of a summons to football's greatest stage

"I didn't really think the Bafana technical team would select me," admits Salmon, 32.

But many local football followers would pick him in a flash, fitness permitting, after his impressive second campaign for the serial champions.

While Salmon is not a prolific scorer - he netted six times this season - his excellence lies in providing a mobile, intelligent bulwark for his team's attacks.

Salmon spends much of a game with his back to goal, protecting the ball and feeding his wingers, Daine Klate and Anthony Laffor, with a steady diet of accurate knock-ons and lay-offs.

"Ideally, I would like to have scored more goals, but you get moulded into a player that functions in a different way," he says. "So I have no complaints. For me, it's plain and simple: football is a team game.

"I play within a system, so if I don't stand out, it doesn't matter to me. The individualist days of football are long gone."

The Zimbabwe-born Salmon cut his teeth at Boksburg FC and Alberton FC before two excellent seasons with SuperSport United won him a move to Dutch side NAC Breda in 1999.

He enjoyed instant success with Breda, playing a starring role in the club's second-division title-winning season.

Soon he carved a reputation as one of the Eredivisie's toughest and canniest forwards. But after a transfer to FC Groningen, a back hernia scuppered his progress. His slow return to fitness after the operation soured his time at Groningen.

"It took me a while to regain my form, but the club didn't protect me from the supporters, who turned on me a bit."

He defied the boo-boys by getting fit and moving back to Breda, and then spent one season with PAOK in Greece before his homesick wife convinced him to accept SuperSport United's offer of a homecoming deal.

It was a canny move. One league title is already in Salmon's bag, with a second likely to arrive in the next fortnight. And Gavin Hunt's high-tempo, wing-based approach is tailor-made for his game.

Salmon says the coach's constant sniping at his own team's performances, even in victory, is not merely a show of perfectionism.

"There's no game playing - it is what it is. It's in his family. He and his wife absolutely love football. And after all the years he's put into coaching, it's now paying off."

Salmon is not known for mincing his words, either.

He has publicly attacked the standard of refereeing in the PSL and he's blunt about the European aspirations of talented PSL players such as Klate and Laffor.

"Everybody is always thinking of Europe, but it's quite late in their careers. You have to go when you are young - or you have to be very special to go in your mid-twenties," he says.

"I had a hell of a lot to learn when I went over, and so does Bernard Parker at Twente Enschede.

"He's at a very good team and learning things he should have learnt when he was 10. Not every player has the kind of character you need to do that."

Salmon is heartened by the new crop of young white players in the PSL, such as Bradley Grobler, Michael Morton and Brad Ritson. "When I started, it was difficult for a white guy to break into a club, but I think SuperSport United broke the mould and now the clubs are opening up. It might be the influx of foreign coaches, who don't see colour, only quality."

Salmon says that if anybody is getting a raw deal in SA football, it's coloured players. "The players who have done the best internationally are coloured, but there aren't enough of them in the Bafana team."