BAFANA COACH IN MARCH
Vital matches coming up for SA
Bafana Bafana fans will have to wait until at least March before the identity of the new national team coach is unveiled, warns South African Football Association president Danny Jordaan.
Discussion over a variety of candidates, many of whom have been leaked to the media in recent days, will only formally begin once Jordaan returns from the African Nations Cup and engages with the organisation’s technical committee.
Jordaan says he is using the opportunity of being in Gabon to talk to various administrators and coaches, and said he was again surprised at how sought after the Bafana job was, including direct overtures from coaches involved in the tournament. “But everything is just speculation because no process has started. Sure we are working on the process, but we have a lot of candidates to get through and vet, and then only can we move on with the selection process.” Jordaan again insisted that the new coach would need to have a good knowledge of the African game with vital matches coming up for the country in 2017. Bafana play Nigeria away in June in their opening qualifying match for the 2019 Nations Cup and then must face the Cape Verde Islands (home and away), Burkina Faso (home) and Senegal (away) in the World Cup qualifiers. That South Africa is well placed to qualify for Russia 2018 means the Bafana job has attracted a fine calibre of prospective coaches, all eager to go to the World Cup. “We will move quickly to get him in place,” promised Jordaan.