Call them Sihlangu ‘Eagles’ already!

. . . Ignoring weather warnings issued since last week and travelling to Mozambique only to return home the next day clearly shows the word ‘planning’ does not exist at Sigwaca House. It exposes why we have always decried the lack of leadership in our football.

My dearest readers… If ever you needed something to give you an overall synopsis of how our football leadership standards have fallen to residual lows, then events of the past week nicely encapsulated it.

The Eswatini Football Association (EFA), in its infinite wisdom, sent the national team, Sihlangu Semnikati, to Maputo, Mozambique on Tuesday to play a practice match against the Black Bulls. The team returned home on Wednesday afternoon having not played the friendly match because the pitch was waterlogged.

If this unfortunate scenario had happened unplanned and spontaneous, it would have been understandable and regarded as unforeseen circumstances. But lo and behold, since last Tuesday, weather experts have been issuing warnings that Tropical Cyclone Filipo will hit Mozambique and the Eastern part of Eswatini. If someone at Sigwaca House had bothered to follow world news or check the weather, he would have known it was a bad idea to take the team to Mozambique on the very day Filipo was expected to cause havoc.

But not those silk-suited souls at Sigwaca House! They commanded Sihlangu to travel to Mozambique on the eve of the storm and then feigned surprise when the next morning the pitch was waterlogged. If this is not daft then the word has lost its meaning!

But seriously now, who takes such nonsensical decisions that even put the lives of the players and everybody within the team camp at risk?

About E30 000 has gone down the drain (see our story on the back page) because someone failed to apply the basics when planning for an international practice match or even travelling in the first place, especially in these times of climate change.

But that’s the kind of leadership we have in our football. It is these decisions which make them look irrational, emotional and hollow. Or maybe Sihlangu is now the new Eagles, going right through the eye of the storm?

I know only of an eagle that can fly above a storm.

When it comes to the national team, Sihlangu Semnikati, some of the decisions leave quite a lot to be desired. Come to think of it. When we all expected the EFA to release coach Dominic Kunene from his misery, our football leadership made inane cosmetic changes which to be fair and honest do not make any sense. The EFA got rid of Kunene’s assistants, deploying the ever-present Anthony Mdluli to be the goalkeeper coach while getting rid of Sipho Dube and trainer Mbuso Gina, bringing Ernest Mavuso, Sifiso ‘Nuro’ Ntibane and Dennis Fakudze. With all due respect, what was the EFA hoping to achieve here?

Where is the method in this madness?

If the EFA were serious about seeing Sihlangu do better than it currently does, Kunene and his entire crew should have been sent packing. They have failed miserably. Under their (mis) guidance Sihlangu failed to score a single goal in 540 minutes of play – both AFCON 2023 qualifiers and the World Cup 2026 qualifiers.

Honestly, in an ideal world, one would not be wasting precious time and space, writing about the cannon fodder that is the senior national team Sihlangu Semnikati, the revered ‘whipping boys’ of the African continent.

What’s there to say about how poor our national team is that has not been said before? Why are we surprised that our national team is softer than a marshmallow when we have no development programmes worth the tag; when we have no national development strategy and when we continue doing the same thing all over again but expecting a different result?

German-born influential scientist, Albert Einstein has a word for it – INSANITY.

I am deliberately allowing my good self to sound like a stuck record because I honestly love my country and unlike some, I have no other country to run to. I am stuck here. Besides it is no less a journalistic duty to speak for others who do not have the pristine platform like this newspaper, Eswatini Financial Times, which I am privileged to have been afforded by Rubicon Media Group Africa to share my humble opinion on what I strongly believe is the reason we remain the laughing stock in the world of football.

Hapless

It would be too easy to just bash the Eswatini Football Association (EFA) Executive Committee headed by one Peter ‘Samora’ Simelane and even lampoon the underwhelming hapless head coach Dominic Kunene for doing a fine mess of taking the national team to the gutter.

Too easy, methinks. Everybody has done that on all social media platforms, calling for the stepping down of Kunene and his equally hapless merry men. But we are not addressing the root cause of this malaise we have witnessed over the last two decades. We are merely peppering over the cracks which are now deeper and scarier. Sihlangu has not scored a goal in 540 minutes of play in any of the qualifiers this year – both AFCON 2023 and World Cup 2026.

I am not talking about winning a game. But scoring just ONE goal. Kunene is so pitiful that even his monosyllabic one-word answers in press conferences do not offer much in terms of understanding how he had approached the game and what went wrong. In fact, each time he tries to answer a question he looks out of depth. Secondly, knowing the politics in our wacky world of football and how Kunene found himself occupying the head coach position and all the behind-the-scenes musical chairs being played, therein lies the rub.

Accountable

Inept Kunene aside, it is the powers-that-be, that, we should hold accountable. Kunene’s appointment and some previous local coaches’ appointments in the national team coaches have nothing to do with excellence or their capability. It is a football political appointment centred on the Eswatini Football Association (EFA) presidential elections. It works on opposite ends. One to ‘thank’ those who voted in the incumbent President and also for the current President to guarantee himself another term in office. For the record, this did not start with the current EFA president Peter ‘Samora’ Simelane. It has been ongoing for years. So dear reader, hold your breath. Sihlangu Semnikati has long been used as a pawn in the football political chess game. It has long been sacrificed on the altar of the EFA presidential elections.

As fiery scribe Bheki Makhubu would sum it up, this is as dirty as a coal miner’s underwear in January! So next time you hear EFA president ‘Samora’ Simelane defend Dominic Kunene to the hilt and insist he is not going anywhere, remember that the national team coach voted Simelane in as president in elections in 2021 and again in 2025, the EFA will be going to the polls. You cannot bite the hand that feeds you. This, therefore, is one of the reasons Sihlangu Semnikati’s downward spiral is the least of concerns for the silksuited souls at Sigwaca House who are neck deep into the trough. The team has turned out to be a side hustle for those who call the shots at Sigwaca House and in the bigger scheme of things, it is a bargaining tool for power.

As long as national team coaches sit as delegates in the EFA Assembly, and hold voting power, we will forever wonder why certain people find themselves occupying seats in the squad technical bench when they have never won anything in their lives. Those people have their handlers who play the dirty football political game to keep their hands in the cookie jar. It has nothing to do with seeing Sihlangu win games. It has nothing to do with football development. It has everything to do with power and money.

Unless we confront those issues and deal with them decisively, we will continue moaning and groaning about Sihlangu, hire and fire coaches yet we all know what the biggest malaise eating away the fibre of our football are – the dysfunctional development programmes, the jobs-for-pals, the poor premier league standards, lack of resources and most crucial, the security forces teams dominance.

The cycle of misery will continue until the cows come home. A very sad state of affairs.

Sihlangu, in short, LIPHAKELO LABO. Bayatentele nje. That’s why the word, ‘ACCOUNTABILITY’ has become a swear word in our football.

The EFA has normalized mediocrity because the national team has become their personal property. That’s why someone is prepared to send the national team right into the eye of the Filipo storm and sees nothing wrong with it.