SAZI HADEBE | We’re long past extra time waiting for Safa to reach the goals

You won’t find much to enthuse about when it comes to what SA football achieved in 2022. But from the little that we did manage to gain in 2022, we should be able to draw inspiration on what we could do in the future.

Many countries have shown what can be won if a country believes in a process of producing top players who can eventually compete with the best in the world. In trying to be better we should also, as individuals, start asking ourselves tough questions on what we can contribute to building and moulding our future stars.

Simple things such as buying soccer balls, boots, kits, or cutting grass on the fields can go a long way in making sure that our children play the beautiful game.

We’ve learnt from more than three decades of overwhelming underachievement, that relying on our football authorities at the Safa House in Nasrec to produce the sort of players who can compete at the highest level is never going to happen. We know that the focus of those in suits is not on players but in keeping their positions that enable them to earn the money and travel the world, where we often see them shamelessly standing up and cheering teams from other countries. We simply cannot continue putting our hopes in people who are not ashamed of behaving like that.

Everyone knows by now that the suits’ main mission is all about fulfilling their personal goals, just as we see SA politicians do to the downtrodden every day.

We’ve got to find our own ways of producing players and forget about authorities who don’t have the time or the inclination to do what they were mandated to do.

When we talk of what SA achieved this year there are just two things that stand out for me. On top of the list is, of course, Banyana Banyana who finally won the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (Wafcon) in July in Morocco, after losing their five previous finals.

In Desiree Ellis’s team we have one big hope, but that hope will quickly disappear, as it did with Bafana Bafana after they won the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) in 1996, if we rest on our laurels.

We need to continue creating an environment that will unleash better players that can compete not just on the continent but with the rest of the world.

We need to continue creating an environment that will unleash better players who can compete not just on the continent but with the rest of the world. The signs that Banyana will prosper in the future are there if you consider our women’s under-17 team recently won the Cosafa Under 17 Championship in Malawi under the tutelage of former Banyana goalkeeper Delisile Mbatha. There’s no doubt that the players who won in Malawi will soon graduate to Banyana, the team that will represent SA in next year’s Women’s Fifa World Cup in New Zealand and Australia. Such continuity in the development of our women’s teams is what has brought us to where we are, but we shouldn’t stop aiming for the very top — constantly winning on the continent and doing well on the world stage.

We know that while Banyana is strong on the continent, they’re still miles away from catching up with the rest of the world. Teams like Netherlands, Brazil, Sweden, France, the US and some in Asia have shown over the years how successful you can be in women’s football if you give the women the same resources and respect as you do the men.

The second big achievement that many may not even have regarded as such, is that of our men’s under-17 team coached by Duncan Crowie, the former Santos striker. Crowie’s team have qualified for the under-17 Afcon in April in Algeria, after finishing second to Zambia in the Cosafa tournament played alongside the women in Malawi this month.

“We’ll take the positives from the tournament, reinforce them, then look at the negatives and see how we can improve,” Crowie said after his team failed to beat Zambia in the final.

Players like striker Siyabonga Mabena, who won the Golden Boot and Player of the Tournament in Malawi, must be looked after as he could become a player Bafana could build around for the future.

So when we talk about building strong national teams we should start with Crowie and Mbatha’s teams and ensure the players already in the system are not lost. Bafana are where they are today because we’ve failed in the past to guide and monitor the careers of our young players.

If we looked at the SA under-23 team that qualified for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo and the players who have graduated to Bafana, we could probably only identify one, Teboho Mokoena, as a regular for Bafana. Where are the others?

Many are lost in our system because they’re not given enough chances to play at club level. More effort should be made by both clubs and country to produce more Mokoenas because it’s the players with the experience of playing in big tournaments like the Olympics that can lift Bafana.

So if we’re aspiring to be in the position Morocco is in today, everyone needs to do something about helping our kids in football. To stand aside and hope something will come from Safa is futile. As we enter 2023 we should make getting our hands dirty helping our kids one of our main priorities.

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