Soccer says: Laduuuma!

24 July 2014 - 02:14 By Mninawa Ntloko
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SAFA CEO Dennis Mumble announced today that the new national team coach will be named next Saturday. File photo.
SAFA CEO Dennis Mumble announced today that the new national team coach will be named next Saturday. File photo.

The SA Football Association expects that it will be shown to have achieved a complete financial turnaround - and even a profit - when auditors finish tallying the numbers for the past year.

The football body reported a loss of R46-million for the 2012-2013 financial year but CEO Dennis Mumble said yesterday it expected to be back in the black after reducing its costs drastically.

Safa asked Bafana Bafana and other national teams not to book luxury accommodation on their travels around the world as part of the cost-reduction exercise. Players and Safa officials were told to fly economy class, regardless of the length of the flight, he said.

''We managed to save between R30-million and R35-million from those cost-saving measures alone," Mumble said.

''Our auditors are here [at Safa House] as we speak and the savings could be higher than that after they have confirmed the final numbers. From our own management accounting system, and our own projections, I am confident that we will turn a surplus .

''But one thing we are certain of is that we will wipe out the R46-million deficit from the last financial year."

Mumble said the bulk of the deficit was due to the acquisition of assets from Fifa after the 2010 World Cup, not from cash losses.

There was huge debt associated with the depreciation of the assets and that reflected negatively on the balance sheet, he said. ''Those things will not appear in our books in this financial year because we have disposed of them. The provisions that we made for losses in the 2013 African Nations Cup and this year's African Nations Championship [both hosted in South Africa] will be reversed because [the organisers] have projected that they will not make a loss."

Mumble said the vote of confidence from corporate South Africa in the 10 months Danny Jordaan has been Safa president had also contributed to the financial turnaround.

Insiders say a new broadcast deal for the rights to Bafana and other national team matches - still to be announced - will be worth more than R1-billion to Safa.

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