Pitso unleashes a volley of shots at Da Gama’s goal of coaching Bafana full time
If you were to ask Mamelodi Sundowns coach Pitso Mosimane to name the 20 coaches he admires the most in the world, it is safe to assume that Bafana Bafana caretaker coach Owen Da Gama would not crack the nod.
Da Gama’s name is not likely to appear on Jingles’s Christmas shopping list any time soon and the Sundowns mentor — who owns one of the sharpest tongues in South African football — will have laughed himself senseless when he heard that the acting Bafana coach now has his sights set on the job on a full-time basis.
Never one to waste time with faux politeness, the shoot-from-the-lip Mosimane did not mince his words when he criticised Da Gama for his selection policy and training methods after the international break a couple of weeks ago.
Mosimane accused Da Gama of running Bafana training sessions like a military barracks. And he asked why Sundowns’s Tebogo Langerman was the only left-back called up for the two friendly internationals — against Guinea-Bissau in Durban and Angola in East London — at the beginning of April.
“He drilled them‚” said Mosimane. “You choose 25 players and one left-back? I mean, really? And you know the training in Bafana, hey? We didn’t train, we had to train for 20 minutes because they were complaining about hamstrings and tightness.
“You have to understand that Owen wants to be coach of Bafana, so he drilled them, and it’s not the first time.” Ouch!
Da Gama bit the bullet and put his name forward for the job early in April, saying he was qualified to succeed the sacked Ephraim “Shakes” Mashaba.
Da Gama must have felt he had nothing to lose and used a media conference to make an impassioned plea to his South African Football Association (Safa) employers to consider him when they make their final selection.
‘‘I hear about people that are qualified to be here, and I am not,” he said, close to tears.
“I don’t understand that, and maybe I should try to understand it a little bit more.
“With over 50 games with Bafana and watching over 200 games in the country, I think I know and have an idea as to what is happening in the national set-up.” Gripping stuff! But Mosimane was seemingly not moved by this cry of anguish and made his own recommendations known.
“If it’s Stuart [Baxter] I will be happy. If it’s Gavin [Hunt] I will be happy,” said Mosimane. Awkward!
“We need integrity. This is the national team. We need to talk and liaise. You just can’t put training sessions the way you want to put and players run around the park with a 1966 training programme. No, no, I stand against it.”
As they say in the television infomercials, “but wait, there’s more”.
“I can guarantee you Stuart will never have a strange team sheet and call-ups and things you ask yourself, how can you call one left-back?” bristled Mosimane.
“You will never get that and you will never have people in camp training like in the army base, like in the US Navy.” Ay caramba! Not to be outdone, Wits coach Hunt communicated his own assessment of Da Gama’s regime after his player Phakamani Mahlambi was selected for Bafana.
Hunt was not happy with the timing of the teenager’s selection to Bafana and said the caretaker coach should have left him alone. ‘‘We can work on a lot of things with” Mahlambi, but at the Bafana camp, they were “not going to do any work with him. So, it is a problem,” Hunt said.
Given that there is certainly no love here, would it not be something if Safa did the unthinkable and gave the Bafana job to Da Gama? And you thought the excitement and the tension comes to an end after the final whistle?
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