Safa will concentrate on a centre and schools football
THE SA Football Association has been forced to take a more realistic approach to development than the wildly theoretical Technical Master Plan (TMP), saying they will concentrate on establishing a national technical centre and breathing life into schools football.
A year-and-a-half into his presidency, Danny Jordaan said the cornerstones of the TMP, launched two years ago, can eventually be realised. Inroads have been made into coaching coaches and establishing junior leagues in local football associations (LFAs).
But the R300-million annual budget — R100-million from corporate social investment (CSI) — was always overly ambitious. Figures provided show that Safa’s development agency has raised R18.5-million from CSI.
Safa is concentrating on its new technical centre near FNB Stadium, to cost R107-million, which Jordaan said represents a first stage.
“The TMP’s weakness was it had no implementation strategy. You cannot say, ‘Now we’re going to have heart operations’, and I ask you: ‘Where is your hospital?” Jordaan said.
“You cannot have a technical plan without a technical centre and (nine provincial) academies. You put a rugby player from the townships next to a football player — the rugby player is always in better condition. We need that centre to fix those things. In the end it will probably cost more than R500million.”
Jordaan said Safa has identified doubling its registered players from 2.5-million to 5million (10% of the population), in line with a country like Germany, with 80 000 from 80million.
Women’s football and schools football — pitifully under- PROGRESS: Danny Jordaan says inroads have been made into coaching coaches tapped — are obvious sources of expansion. A resolution was taken at last week’s Safa constitutional congress to take over the running of schools football from associate member the SA Schools Football Association.
“Sasfa would claim at best 5 000 schools are playing foot- ball and at worst 3 000, from 27 000. Safa have existing structures and the teachers must be coaches, with us paying them.
“Germany has 80 000 junior matches aweek. If we had 20 000 schools with two boys’ and two girls’ teams, that’s our 80 000.”
Jordaan believes that along UNCONVINCED: Farouk Khan is scathingly sceptical with the establishment of junior leagues countrywide — funded by the 2010 Fifa World Cup Legacy Trust — this could see an explosion in talent production. At this stage of implementation, of 341 regions “about 290” have boys’ under-13 and under15 leagues.
Coaching of coaches has fallen short of the TMP’s targets. Last year 1 178 coaches were trained for a Caf D licence, 163 for the B licence, 94 for the A licence and 27 as instructors.
“The TMP did not take into account reality, saying train 10 000 coaches a year.
“In the near future we will be getting to 5 000 a year. As there are more instructors it snowballs. I think by 2018 to 2020 we can produce 10 000 a year,” Jordaan said.
Development figure Farouk Khan, owner of the successful independent Stars of Africa academy, applauded the introduction of junior leagues, but is scathingly sceptical of the value of some of Safa’s other initiatives.
“I speak from experience and can challenge Safa because I coach kids on a daily basis.
“Danny makes a lot of statements to please the public,” Khan said. “I fell out of favour with the Safa technical committee because I said training 10 000 coaches without making sure they have employment is money down the drain. We are not England and Spain — they have the means to employ those coaches,” Khan said.
“The SA public is being taken for a ride because we believe these things we read about 10 000 coaches. Teachers don’t want to stay after school and coach. And can they coach?
“Other smaller football countries, like Australia, are moving ahead much quicker. We are constantly playing catch-up — from our development to our national teams — and it shows. With our resources we should be the best in Africa.
“It can work if it’s done in the proper way. And that will benefit me, because then I have less work to do with players. Everybody wins. But you need to involve reputable people with experience to develop players.”