Senegal’s remarkable triumph at the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) in Cameroon challenges us to ask what’s stopping our Bafana Bafana from achieving such feats.
It’s not an easy question to deal with, but we can certainly steal a thing or two from the Senegalese, who have waited for 60 years to be officially crowned as the No. 1 team in Africa.
For a close to 40 months Senegal have been the top-ranked side in Africa and part of their success has been realised through the trust they’ve shown their coach Aliou Cisse, 45, who has been in charge since 2015. Cisse was the skipper of the Senegalese squad which caught the world’s eye at the 2002 Fifa World Cup in South Korea/Japan, where they were unlucky to be eliminated 1-0 by Turkey in the quarterfinals in what was their maiden appearance at the global showpiece.
The Senegalese coach was part of the galaxy of stars that stunned the world when they beat defending champions France 1-0 in their opening match of that World Cup.
When the Senegal national team’s form dipped in 2015, and they were eliminated in the first round of 2015 Afcon, some of those 2002 stars, including El Hadji Diouf and Khalilou Fadiga, recommended that the job be given to their former teammate and captain.
If Safa continues to elect some of the governing party’s overstretched cadres to run our football, we’ll continue to punch way below our weight in world football.
Cisse, who succeeded Frenchman Alain Giresse, a reserved defensive midfielder and central defender, did not have much managerial experience, but when he took the job he simply said: “I would like to win, win and win with this team.”
It was quite brave of Cisse to take the job seven years ago having been one of the players who failed to convert a penalty when they lost 3-2 to Cameroon in penalty shoot-out in the 2002 Afcon final.
When Senegal lost for the second time in an Afcon final against Algeria in Egypt in 2019, calls for Cisse’s sacking grew. But credit must go to the Senegal Football Federation for sticking with their man, because seven years later he’s finally delivered what many believe this extremely talented team deserves.
Cisse follows in the footsteps of three other local coaches who have won six Afcon tournaments since 2006. Those coaches were Hassan Shehata (2006, 2008, and 2010 with Egypt); Stephen Keshi (2013 with Nigeria) and Djamel Belmadi (2019 with Algeria).
But the question remains: what can SA learn from Senegal’s experience and success in African football?
There are plenty of lessons, especially for the SA Football Association (Safa), which has been central, over the past two decades, in dismantling any chance we had of succeeding at international level.
The first and most glaring lesson for Safa is that they need to employ a Bafana coach they can trust as much as Senegal FF trusted Cisse. The last time Safa showed some confidence and trust in a national team coach was when we had Clive Barker between 1994 and 1997. Ironically, Barker — a local — remains the only coach to win the Afcon (1996) with Bafana.
In recent years Safa lost an opportunity to build a team around a coach who may even have coaching abilities far smarter than Cisse.
Safa wasted much of the investment they put into Pitso Mosimane when they sacked him towards the end of 2012. Mosimane, who had joined Bafana as assistant in 2006, four years ahead of the country hosting the 2010 World Cup, succeeded Brazilian Carlos Alberto Parreira as Bafana head coach in July 2010.
Mosimane’s biggest fault in the eyes of Safa was his failure to take the team to the 2012 Afcon. The decision to sack Mosimane was never given much thought insofar as looking at what the team’s future held if he remained.
In hindsight, with Mosimane’s success at Mamelodi Sundowns between (2012 and 2020) and now with Egyptian giants Al Ahly, a team he has already won two Caf Champions League titles with, Safa’s call to sack him remains one of their countless mistakes in handling Bafana coaches.
But SA’s football problems don’t start and end with who is coaching Bafana. There are numerous fundamental flaws that need to be fixed, starting with the head of that organisation.
The person leading Safa should inspire confidence in both the corporate world and the players, and should have the will and resolve to find out what needs to be fixed for us to produce a winning national team.
A Safa elective congress in December this year offers a great platform for someone, preferably who is not on the Safa executive board at the moment, to step up to the plate. But that is unlikely to happen because the current suits will make it difficult for anyone, especially those viewed as outsiders, to challenge incumbent Danny Jordaan, who is likely to be re-elected.
Jordaan may be re-elected despite his age (he turns 70 this year) and the fact that Bafana have failed to qualify for three successive Fifa World Cup tournaments (2014, 2018 and 2022) under his watch since his elevation in 2013.
Under Jordaan, Safa have severed almost all ties they once had with those running school football, and the fact that our sports ministry does nothing to fix this, worsens the situation.
For our football to go back to what it once was, we need to revive the game at grassroots level, starting with school football where our former stars, including the likes of Doctor Khumalo and Mosimane, were unearthed.
The reason SA still has decent Springbok and Protea national teams is because the development structures at schools, especially in private and Model C schools, are still vibrant and capable of churning out future stars every year. It’s a simple theory, one that Safa decided to abandon in the past 20 years.
Today, with all the fantastic football infrastructure that’s been built up over the years, we don’t have a single national school football tournament that we can be proud of.
If Safa continues to elect some of the governing party’s overstretched cadres to run our football, we’ll continue to punch way below our weight in world football.
A young Safa president in the same mould as Cameroon football legend Samuel Eto’o, 40, their FA chief, is perhaps what SA needs to have a fresh look at what can be done to improve our football.
But if the status quo is maintained at the Safa congress later this year, we may as well kiss our hopes of seeing Bafana doing anything close to what Saido Mane and his Senegal teammates did in Cameroon, goodbye.
