Yet another coach... yawn
SOUTH African football fans have had their hopes dashed so often and seen so many Bafana Bafana coaches come and go that when yet another hunt for a yet another coach begins they struggle to get excited.
There is also the depressing fact that this year SA fans will be forced to press their noses to the window for the African Cup of Nations (Afcon), relegated to the status of mere onlookers while the rest of the continent’s top nations compete in Gabon. How much lower will we go? It’s hard today to believe that our country once had the continent’s best team – in 1996 Bafana took on the best African sides at the Afcon and pulled off what many thought was an impossible task – clinching the title in a packed FNB Stadium.
After Clive Barker guided the team to the summit of continental football it seemed that the way was open for Bafana to make good on the promise of a great future.
Twenty years hence we have little to crow about and a national team that is hopelessly out of its depth in world football.
Bafana coach Shakes Mashaba publicly venting his anger at the SA Football Association’s top brass and being shown the door has hardly helped.
After the well-paid coach – on a salary of R500 000-a-month – blew his top at Safa president Danny Jordaan following a Bafana match last year, he was found guilty of gross misconduct and insubordination and fired.
Safa now faces the task of finding a replacement and is ready to dig deep and pay a competitive salary to a man able to pull Bafana from the dregs of despair.
The football body says it will consider candidates from South Africa and abroad.
“It would be nice,” said Safa chief executive Dennis Mumble, “if we could find a South African, but we cannot exclude anyone because we are looking for the best coach available. If it is a foreign coach‚ we will go with that coach.”
No matter who Safa picks, the task ahead will be enormous.
Despite years of experimenting, trying to find the right balance between foreign-based and domestic players, a number of the current crop are simply not good enough to get Bafana onto an upward trajectory.
The new coach will have his work cut out from day one as he must ensure qualification for the 2018 World Cup in Russia and a year later get Bafana Bafana onto a plane to Cameroon for the Nations Cup finals.
SA has also drawn the powerful Nigeria in their qualifying group for 2019. As things stand, that is a scary proposition, possibly even a poisoned chalice for the man daring enough to take up the task.