SAZI HADEBE | It’s no surprise Mozambique and Zambia produce better players than us

SA football suffered a huge setback over the past week, but because it didn’t involve Bafana Bafana not many people noticed nor cared. 

That’s one of the big problems with SA football. Our focus, be it from football officials or anyone, always starts and ends at the top end of our game. We always get shocked — the same way President Cyril Ramaphosa is by load-shedding — when Bafana fail to qualify for major football events. Like our major energy-producing plants that need constant servicing, so is our football, which will only succeed when we’ve put plans in place to develop our youngsters.

Only when we have a strategy and working plans will we have a Bafana who will go to the World Cup or Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) on a regular basis.

Chances of improving our situation looks bleak because some of the young players who could have taken us to the 2026 World Cup have just failed to qualify for the African Under-20 Championships in Egypt early next year. The top four teams in next year’s tournament in Egypt will represent the continent in the Fifa Under-20 World Cup to be played in Indonesia late next year.

The SA Under-20 side could not make it to the final of the Cosafa Under-20 tournament in Eswatini last week as they were knocked out by Mozambique in the semi-final. The defeat to Mozambique meant we did not qualify for next year’s Under-20 Championship, as only two teams from the southern part of Africa could be part of the 12 finalists.

Twelve-time Cosafa champions Zambia beat the Mozambicans 1-0 in the final. Our team could only finish third after beating Angola 4-2 on penalties in a third-place play-off.

SA’s Ashwin Andries, Mohau Nkota and Relebohile Ratomo scored two goals each in the tournament, three behind Angola’s Danilson Makokisa, who finished as a top scorer.

The bottom line is that for the second time running, SA is not going to the Under-20 African Championships.

Steenbok has some interesting plans for SA football that include fixing school football and establishing an Under-15 national side (boys and girls), which would feed players to the Under-17s upwards.

SA’s problem doesn’t start with how we perform in the tournaments we qualify for. It starts with the Safa head honchos who have decided to prioritise patronage over football development. A few weeks ago Safa’s new technical director, Walter Steenbok, admitted that Safa’s technical department was good as nonexistent. There are no employed coaches or officials dedicated to work with the junior national teams on a permanent basis. Steenbok also admitted Safa’s relationship with schools, where these young players who should be playing for our Under-17 and Under-20 teams, should be sourced from, is very poor to say the least.

Safa also doesn’t have records of who is running football academies in the country, and they don’t know how the young players in those academies are being developed because they’re not in control of these bodies.

Steenbok has some interesting plans for SA football that include fixing school football and establishing an Under-15 national side (boys and girls), which would feed players to the Under-17s onwards. On paper, Steenbok’s plan looks great, but for that plan to work, there should be a Safa administration willing to endorse, embrace and implement it.

The reality is that in Safa, headed by Danny Jordaan, no-one has time for football. At the top of their agenda is their plum positions and keeping those jobs. That’s where the root of our football problems lie. The problems are not on the field of play.

The 2017 Under-20 African Championships hosted by Zambia showed us how vital this tournament is for a country’s development. Zambia won that tournament with their striker, Patson Daka, who is now 24 and plays for English club Leicester City today, chosen as the best player. SA’s Luther Singh finished as joint top-scorer alongside Daka and Edward Chilufiya, also of Zambia, in that tournament with four goals.

Singh was one of our promising players for Bafana until something happened between him and SA head coach Hugo Broos, who was incensed when Singh couldn’t honour his first call-up last year because he had no updated travel documents.

The reality is players like Daka would not be where they are today if Zambia did not take development seriously. That Zambia and Mozambique can develop their young players better than SA should tell us about Safa’s priorities and the kind of a challenge Steenbok has.

Coaches and people like Steenbok will remain Safa scapegoats when we fail to qualify for events. Those suits are always happy to shift the blame when Bafana have not qualified for the Afcon or a World Cup. The same will happen to Broos before the 2026 World Cup. It will happen because our Under-20 team failed in Eswatini, which means there will be two years of no proper growth for our young players as there will two big tournaments they won’t be part of.

When Bafana fail to do anything encouraging in the coming years we shouldn’t be shocked. If anything, we should be shocked that Zambia and Mozambique continue to be better than us in producing young players. But at least we know who the culprits are.