Let’s face it, Jordaan is an old hand at dealing with public condemnation and he raised his game to impressive levels during his time as mayor of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro.
The opposition parties made it their life’s purpose to keep him on his toes and they threw everything but the kitchen sink at himwhenever they got the chance.
Nothing was off limits and they went as far as using Fifa’s never-ending corruption scandal to turn the screws on the good mayor.
But belligerent critique is like water off a duck’s back to the Safa president and if anyone can give Mashaba a crash course on dealing with public criticism, the Bafana coach should look no further than the former first citizen of Port Elizabeth.
Part of the problem emanates from the coach’s penchant for reading about himself, and it does not help that he works himself up into a state of fury once he has digested someone’s scathing critique. When has that kind of hobby ever been good for a coach’s gizzard?
Mashaba cut an irritated figure when he faced members of the media in a crowded hotel conference room in Auckland Park this week after — you guessed it — reading about himself in the media.
Bloody hell!
Mashaba was to speak about Bafana’s dead rubber 2017 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against Mauritania in Nelspruit on Friday night, but something else was on the visibly peeved coach’s mind.
He said he was upset by a report that had appeared in a Sunday newspaper.
‘‘There is one thing I would like to raise first," he began.
‘‘You know, our press conferences never run smoothly but this time I feel insulted.
"I do not want to say please stop it — but stop calling me arrogant please.
"Stop calling me arrogant. That is an insult.
‘‘You are saying Shakes is arrogant but you don’t say why he is arrogant. I have not heard ... the last story was [on Sunday] and he just wrote that I must stop this arrogance. What arrogance is that?
‘‘I have got a grandson and he is four years old. He says: ‘Khulu, I heard someone on the radio and he says you are arrogant. What is arrogance?’
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