Development is a major issue in SA sports
BAFANA Bafana’s recent embarrassing Durban defeat to Cape Verde led to local legend Sibusiso Zuma adding to calls for South Africa to have more players playing in Europe in order to boost the standard of the national squad. That can only be one part of the solution to the country’s number one sport.
South Africa has abundant natural talent at youth level but due to poor coaching they will never reach the required standards needed to play at the highest levels in Europe. Currently we have one South African playing in UEFA Champions League, Dino Ndlovu of Azerbaijan club Qarabag.Due to poor quality of our local development structures many of our players based in Europe have been returning to the Premier Soccer League in recent years.
One factor is that sometimes there are better salaries locally, but more crucially the players are not able to kick on into the bigger leagues in Europe.
We have many young players in the lower leagues in Europe, in Scandinavian countries, Portugal, Belgium, Holland, amongst others, yet they struggle to make the breakthrough to regular first team football and consequently can’t be signed by clubs in the top five leagues of Europe. Most of these players have not been through the full cycle of an advanced systematic development programme.
Ironically the one player who had a long career at the top level of European football, and a recent returnee to the domestic game, Steven Pienaar, is a perfect example of someone who has come through such a development programme. He started off at the renowned Esselen Park School of Excellence, then played at Ajax Cape Town, Ajax Amsterdam and onwards to greater achievements. That he is still playing in the PSL at 35 proves the point of coming through a quality development programme in order to enjoy a long, successful playing career.
Keagan Dolly of Montpellier in France is another example of a local player coming through quality development programmes.
The key point we drive is that our players must go through the full phase of a systematic development programme between the ages of seven to 12 under a modern scientific training method based on maximising their talent and potential.
The reason why South Americans achieve success in the big five leagues of Europe (Spain, England, Germany, Italy and France) is because of the above statement. They go through the full Development Cycle which is “sealed” by their late teens and early 20s. This talent can then not be altered or changed by another coaching concept, but only enhanced tactically.
This is the major difference between Africans and South Americans plying their trade in Europe. In Africa due to outdated and irrelevant training methods we produce poor “copies” of various European players and styles of play.
Yes we have the odd “accidental” success of an African player who makes it big there.
African players from Francophone countries and Arab North Africa grow up in France and are beneficiaries of their progressive, modern development structures, but still their natural talent is mostly never maximised through these generic coaching methods traditionally aimed at a typical European or Caucasian.
During my time at Mamelodi Sundowns, working with the late Ted Dumitru, I was responsible for scouting and recruiting talented youngsters for their newly revamped academy.
After watching Dolly a few times, doing background checks on him and engaging with him occasionally, I recruited him into our academy programme as he was younger than the other group of players. I also scouted/ recruited Siyanda Xulu, Jabu Shongwe and Buhle Mkhwanazi to name a few who also came from the School of Excellence. We put Dolly under an Accelerated High Performance programme and the rest is history.
It’s been proven in South African football that solutions are available locally, yet we always copy alien/foreign concepts unilaterally without understanding the deeper relevance to our football, our players’ natural attributes and other factors like environment, nutrition, bio-social, culture, etc.
The most wanted and most valuable players in world football today are the exceptionally skilful, creative players. That is because they can turn a tight game on its head with just one moment of individual brilliance and can unlock and penetrate the most compact defence with a skilful dribble. I have seen throughout Soiuth Africa the abundant natural raw talent at pre-puberty levels. We can produce lots of world-class players, if only the right path is followed.
Key attributes of the modern international player include having exceptional technique and a football “brain” (insight/ intelligence). Future trends in the game need players who can easily cope under pressures of time/ space/opponent. Is our Coach Education curriculum, and its Training Methods, teaching prospective coaches how to develop such players? That natural talent which we have in abundance is not enough to reach International levels.
Being given the privilege and opportunity to coach abroad, and on another continent, twice, has reinforced my views on respecting the nature of players, and their local football culture and environment, in trying to maximise that talent in relation to Performance Objectives.
As a “foreign” coach in Vietnam I had to adapt accordingly and learn quickly about local players, and their football culture, language, and other associated factors. In Africa and Asia we find lots of “foreign” coaches, mostly from Europe, failing to achieve sustainable success and thus contributing little or nothing to the progress of football on these continents.
This is due to them failing to adapt, but more importantly, unilaterally imposing their ideas and coaching methods on locals without taking into consideration the crucial factors mentioned above. Coaching principles are universal but training methods must reflect and embrace the specifics of a region or country.
In football, like in life I guess, a “one- size- fits- all” approach will never result in success, let alone long-term sustainable success. At best there will be a once-off “accidental” achievement.
History sadly shows that very few “foreign” coaches have impacted positively on the game in Africa and Asia. For me this is no surprise as no “foreign” coach has ever won the World Cup. The few countries that have won it and are regular challengers for it have been coached by a local.
So yes, South Africa must and should have players playing at the highest levels internationally, in the top five leagues of Europe, UEFA Champions League, but do we have the right systems in place that create a direct pathway to these hallowed platforms?
Successful, progressive countries have a National Football Philosophy; Unitary Advanced Scientific Coaching Approach/Methodology; High Performance Relevant Criteria for Talent Discovery; Full Systematic Developmental and Elite Youth Programmes; and continuous improvement in Coaching/Coach Education.
Numerous case studies and research across sports have shown it is not “rocket science” to conceptualise, implement and effectively action such a holistic technical policy/philosophy for a country, but do we have the vision, the will, the drive, to put such in place as to transform South African football into a genuine global footballing power?
Is South Africa ready to step up and strive for this position in world football, given our resources, infrastructure, raw talent pool and passion? Can we harness the collective talents of our diversity and challenge to win the World Cup, as Brazil and Germany have done by embracing their racial and cultural diversities?
Our diversity should be a blessing, and through football we have a greater chance of achieving genuine integration and that all elusive social cohesion, organically.