We should be celebrating the little strides our senior national football teams made this year, yet one feels that can’t be the case when we still have such a dysfunctional football association.
The year ends with Banyana Banyana having made the country proud with their performance at the 2023 Fifa World Cup in Australasia, where Desiree Ellis’s team made it to the last 16.
Banyana’s performances were so good that the Confederation of African Football (Caf) saw fit to honour Ellis with the women’s football Coach of the Year accolade at the Caf awards ceremony this week.
Ellis’s team ended 2023 on a resounding note after confirming that they will defend the Women Africa Cup of Nations (Wafcon) crown in Morocco next year, after beating Burkina Faso in the final round of qualification a week ago.
Banyana achieved all they did despite pitiful backing from the SA Football Association (Safa). The World Cup send-off was marred by disagreements over players and staff bonuses.
It was thanks to Fifa, confirming ahead of the World Cup, that money due to players for their tournament participation would be paid directly to their accounts that a worst-case scenario between Safa and Banyana was averted.
That probably helped the team focus on football. But Banyana could have been better prepared for the tournament by playing more warm-up matches against better opposition and attending better training camps if Safa had people who cared.
Things may get worse for Bafana Bafana as they prepare to go to the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast early next year. That Bafana even qualified for the tournament was quite a miracle, as the cash-strapped Safa constantly failed to back the team properly, with reports of players and staff not being paid their salaries on time on many occasions.
When your preparations are marred by so many side issues, how can we expect Bafana to perform at their optimal level? They obviously can’t, but the Safa administration led by Danny Jordaan is to blame for this.
Who can forget that, despite all the challenges Bafana faced off the field, they still managed to produce a crucial away win against Liberia in March to confirm their place in Ivory Coast. After that Liberia game, in which Mihlali Mayambela and Zakhele Lepasa scored critical goals, Hugo Broos’s team were so pumped up that they managed to beat the number one team in Africa, Morocco, in their final Afcon qualifier at FNB Stadium in June, with Lepasa again among the scorers in a 2-1 victory.
Bafana’s efforts could be further derailed by Safa, who had yet to confirm the players’ bonuses for the 2023 Afcon up to last week. Safa’s CEO Lydia Monyepao said the talks were ongoing and nothing has been finalised.
Afcon starts next month in Ivory Coast and Safa tells us they have yet to come up with a final offer to the players. I suspect this issue will be a huge distraction for the team’s preparation for the tournament and there will be much focus on unnecessary shenanigans before Bafana play their first Afcon match against Mali in Korhogo on January 16.
When your preparations are marred by so many side issues, how can we expect Bafana to perform at their optimal level? They obviously can’t, but the Safa administration led by Danny Jordaan is to blame for this.
The same Safa has failed to help Bafana coach Broos in his endeavour to have the Premier Soccer League programme halted, at least on December 23, so that Bafana players can get some rest before the team starts preparing for the tournament on January 4.
To pretend they’re doing something to help Broos, Safa issued a statement last Saturday after its NEC meeting, saying they’ll be talking to the PSL about ending the PSL fixtures early. That’s unbelievable, because Broos started talking about this two months ago. Why Safa is waking up now, only God knows.
But that’s the kind of football administration we have in this country — full of people who don’t seem to know what their core responsibility is.
So, if we see a Bafana we don’t recognise at Afcon next year, where they have to negotiate their way through getting good results in Group E against Mali, Tunisia and Namibia, we must know who the real culprits are.
Until Safa does what its real purpose is, we may as well forget about our football getting anywhere close to the prestige of our national rugby team. You never hear such nonsense around the Springboks when they prepare for a tournament and that’s why they’re four-time world champions.
Pity we can’t even dream of Bafana being continental champions, yet we have every means if only our football had a focused leadership. Here’s hoping against all odds for a better 2024 for Bafana and Banyana.
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