SA football never ceases to amaze me. It is always pregnant with possibilities: good and bad.
Perhaps that’s not a necessarily something to frown at because it keeps us entertained either way. I guess the possibility of anything happening in our football is what also keeps me going.
I’m always keen to report and analyse on anything new in our football. Good or bad. The past few days have not been bad at all.
It started on Saturday with Bafana Bafana winning 4-0, a rare feat, it must be said, in their friendly at the FNB Stadium against Sierra Leone. Well, the Leone Stars, ranked 113th in the world are not really a team anyone should expect Bafana to lose against. But having seen a lowly-ranked team such as Sudan (ranked 130th in the world) robbing us of a place in the Africa Cup of Nations as recently as 2021, anything can happen against Bafana.
That was nearly proven again on Tuesday when the same Bafana struggled to beat our neighbours Botswana, ranked 146th in the world. A well-taken free-kick by Teboho Mokoena’s saved Bafana’s blushes as Hugo Broos’s side as Bafana ended up winning that friendly too by a solitary strike.
But what really made me happy over the past four days, is the news that SA’s most decorated coach, Pitso Mosimane, has landed a new job with Saudi Arabian outfit Al-Ahli Saudi.
Mosimane’s departure from our shores was followed by former Orlando Pirates co-head coach Fadlu Davids, who has now linked up with another former Bucs coach Josep Zinnbauer, as his assistant at Russian giants Lokomotiv Moscow. That should tell us something about SA coaches and their progress in recent years.
I doubt that the focus of those in power is to empower our coaches by giving them the jobs that they deserve and support them. That’s one of the bad parts about our football. We don’t want to invest in people’s skills yet we want miracles.
Mosimane and Davids join Benni McCarthy, a striker’s coach at Manchester United, among the top SA coaches now plying their trade abroad. There a few more SA-born coaches, including Bradley Carnell (head coach at St Louis City in the US), coaching overseas teams.
That Al Ahli Saudi were relegated from Saudi Arabia top-flight (Saudi Pro League) to the First Division last season gave more ammunition to those who don’t see the bigger picture in Mosimane joining this club.
My colleague, Marc Strydom, did his best to give the doubting Thomases more about Al-Ahli Saudi in his piece headlined: Fallen giant: What we know about Mosimane’s new club Al-Ahli Saudi on Monday, and I can only urge those who haven’t had time to read the article to go and check it out on TimesLIVE.
The story of Mosimane and Davids tells us we do have people with skills to uplift and empower our players, but what we’re lacking is the willingness and shrewdness of those with financial power to employ these coaches, that is if we want to keep them in the country.
I doubt that the focus of those in power is to empower our coaches by giving them the jobs that they deserve and support them. That’s one of the bad parts about our football. We don’t want to invest in people’s skills yet we want miracles.
That Bafana team manager Vincent Tseka can forget to book a training venue for the team last week on Monday before Bafana met Sierra Leone on Saturday, also shows the bad side of how we’re managing our game at the highest level.
The bad part doesn’t end there because those masquerading as our football office bearers at the SA Football Association (Safa) continue to ignore, support, keep and protect people like that Bafana manager in their employ. It is as if the word disgrace doesn’t exist or apply in the administration of our football. It is that sort of attitude and disrespect that we give to our football that diminishes people’s interest in watching Bafana. This is why we shouldn’t be surprised that the national team was watched by less than 200 people on Saturday when the entrance fee was a paltry R40.
An embarrassing scenario like that will remain part of our beloved Bafana if the Safa head honchos, led by president Danny Jordaan, continue to prioritise patronage within their ranks, rather than focusing on the developing football in the country.
It is also a disgrace (forgetting to book training venues) that chases away whoever thinks of supporting Safa or investing in the development of our football. And as long as that money is not invested in our game we can expect to see as many good SA coaches following the likes of Mosimane, McCarthy, Davids and others abroad. Not that we don’t want our best coaches to learn how things are done elsewhere, but given their numbers and the level of our football, surely their talent is more needed at home.
The day we have good people running our game at Safa is when we’ll see the likes of Mosimane and McCarthy sitting on the same bench or different benches helping SA clubs or national teams. But don’t bet on that happening soon, not with the current leaders whose main focus is to buy favour among those they want to keep on their side in the Safa NEC.
Until we sort out our administration, we should forget thinking we are anywhere near those who deserve to be called a football nation, a nation with some football style or culture. Maybe you can say that if you’re talking about our rugby and the Springboks, but not football. Not when our professional clubs have half of the teams owned by new people whose reasons to join football and their future plans are unknown. The same owners have the audacity to hire and fire coaches despite not knowing anything about football, where it starts or where it should be going.
I hold no grudges againt new people in our football, but they shouldn’t say they want experienced coaches, then when they have them, they want to tell them how to do their job. When we have that in our professional game, we must forget about keeping high-profile coaches like Mosimane.
Mosimane has long passed the stage where he can be fooled by local football owners who want coaches to produce miracles, while they don’t want to invest in players and their technical teams.
If we aspire to be the sort of football nation that some of us think we are, we need to first understand why we’re in football in the first place. Are we in football for those honorariums and delicious sandwiches at those never-ending Safa meetings, or in it to save our football by getting our hands dirty developing players on the field?
The sooner we choose the latter, will be when we’ll begin our journey to becoming what we actually want to be — a football nation. I’m afraid, for now, that process is yet to start.
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