So, Bafana Bafana have qualified for the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations after much consternation on and off the field, with Hugo Broos’s side making the task look far more difficult than it was.
Anyway, it’s good that South Africa will be among the 24 countries competing to wrestle the African crown from Senegal in Ivory Coast next year. Having not won this cup in the last 27 years and with our team still ranked outside the top 10 in Africa, it will be good to remind everyone that we’ll not even start the tournament as dark horses.
It’s also good that coach Broos has already told us of his expectations and when exactly we should prepare ourselves to “kill him” if we think his team performed below par in Ivory Coast.
The 70-year-old Belgian has set his sights on reaching the last 16. The last 16 looks attainable and it’s not a bad target considering how we’ve lowered our standards over the years.
But I should warn that the qualification of Bafana for Afcon 2023 should not fool us into thinking everything football is now hunky dory in SA. We’re at our worst at the moment, to put it mildly.
Many of us delude ourselves into thinking that if Bafana qualifies for events like Afcon, it means our football is on track. I’ve repeated this time and again, a nation’s football does not start and end with its senior national team.
That we have Bafana players who lack basics skills and make our blood pressure levels reach uncharted heights when they play and miss obvious chances in front of goals, says a lot about how we develop them.
Broos himself couldn’t take it last week when he saw his team give away a healthy 2-0 lead at the Orlando Stadium in Soweto against the lowly Liberians. The Bafana coach said afterwards he was overcome with emotions, became very angry hence his storming out of his dugout and off to the dressing-room before full-time.
How many other South Africans watching on television did what Broos did? Gave up watching when they saw the number of chances that were wasted? It all comes down to how we developed our players.
What we see now with the current Bafana side is nothing compared with what’s coming in the years ahead, given how the SA Football Association (Safa) neglects nurturing the promising talent we have.
Yes, we may continue to celebrate Bafana qualifying for 2023 Afcon, but where will we get players with some form of international experience given how badly our junior national teams, the Under 20s and Under 23s, have performed of late.
Even countries like Gambia, rated among the poorest on the continent, are doing far better than SA at Under 20 level.
Our Under 20s failed to qualify for the Under 20 Afcon in Egypt and won by Senegal, the number one team in Africa and champions (at senior level), on March 11.
Even countries like Gambia, rated among the poorest on the continent, are doing far better than SA at Under 20 level, as their team not only reached the 12-team tournament, but competed with Senegal for the crown in the final.
Only Mozambique and Zambia, who both finished at the bottom of their groups, represented the southern part of the continent in Egypt, meaning even those two are better than South Africa at youth level.
As if that was not enough, Safa also conjured up plans to make sure our Under 23s don’t qualify for the next year’s Olympics in Paris. Lack of support for David Notoane’s team led to them failing to go past Congo on Monday. This means again we’re not going to the eight-team Under 23 Afcon in Morocco later this year.
The top three top finishers in Morocco will represent the continent in Paris next year and SA or the future stars of Bafana won’t be there.
The main reason we do so badly at youth level is because Safa, under Danny Jordaan’s leadership, have not run proper youth structures. For more than five years Safa has decided that South Africa doesn’t deserve permanent coaches for national teams below Bafana and Banyana Banyana.
Part timers, who have full-time jobs elsewhere, are called in to help manage the youth teams. And as for how they perform or supported on their missions, nobody at Safa cares.
No international friendlies are played by our youth teams and that’s why our players get a shock of their lives when they engage with the likes of Congo for the first time, just as our Under 23s discovered this past week.
It is against this backdrop that I say, despite Bafana going to Ivory Coast, we should not forget that our house is not in order when it comes to the future of football in SA. This is because we’ve given up on challenging those running the game on our behalf. They do as they please because we’ve also placed our focus on Bafana. We’re hoodwinked, thinking if Bafana still wins a game or two, we’re still OK.
Even our professional football is not helping the situation. In the PSL you may have, for instance, a low team like Marumo Gallants giving champions Mamelodi Sundowns a hard time this week but watch the same team in their next game against a lowly side like them, and they get trashed.
At our junior levels it is like that; there’s no consistency because there’s no consistent proper coaching, training and playing. It is treated as a part-time situation and we think we can go on and make an impression at Afcon.
But while Safa continues with their shenanigans, let’s hope they’ll use the next eight months to prepare Bafana better for Afcon.
It’s a short time,but if we do it properly, Bafana may perform better than Broos himself thinks. Bafana’s technical team needs a bit of revamp and bolstering, because with all due respect to Bafana legend Helman Mkhalele as Broos’s only assistant, I think we need more wise and experienced eyes — people who will add more to what Broos has tried to do since he was appointed in May 2021.
And yah, good luck to Bafana at 2023 Afcon.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.