South African Football Association (Safa) president Danny Jordaan says they were stunned by the backlash they received from the public and the media after former Manchester United player Quinton Fortune joined the Bafana Bafana technical team a few months ago.
Bafana coach Stuart Baxter brought Fortune on board as one of his assistants — the first assistant is Thabo Senong — and the decision opened old wounds‚ sparking furious outrage from irate fans.
Jordaan said a succession of previous Bafana coaches were allowed to bring their own assistants and Safa acceded to Baxter’s request to hire Fortune as it has always been their policy to give national team mentors what they wanted.
But it seems that policy is about to be changed after the now retired player's arrival in the national team left many fans seething.
‘‘I think perhaps there must be policy review on that question because we did and what we’ve consistently done is that we only appoint the senior coach and the senior coach appoints everybody else (in the technical team)‚” he said.
‘‘And that has been what we have been doing over the years.
‘‘But I think it is time to say ’no‚ you recommend and we take the final decision and not you take the final decision and inform us.’
‘‘It happened with Shakes (Mashaba) and it happened with all of the previous coaches — Gordon (Igesund)‚ they all brought their own people.”
Fortune had a long and well-documented history of thumbing his nose at numerous Bafana call-up letters during his playing days and he eventually succeeded in turning public opinion against him.
It also didn't help that he was always eager to offer a poor assessment of the domestic game whenever he got the chance and even Safa were regular recipients of his acerbic tongue.
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