Running the rule over Baxter
With the pending appointment of a new Bafana Bafana coach, Stuart Baxter is tipped for a second tenure in the national team hot seat. With SuperSport United granting the South African Football Association permission to engage Baxter, Thembinkosi Sekgaphan
Pros
1. Baxter is familiar with coaching Bafana Bafana, having led the team from May 2004 to November 2005. He resigned after failing to qualify for the 2006 World Cup, but one often ignored point is that in Bafana’s qualifying group was a superb Ghanaian team containing stars like Michael Essien and Stephen Appiah. Baxter did, meanwhile, qualify Bafana for the 2006 Africa Cup of Nations. His record actually looks quite good in this light.
2. Having spent close to four seasons coaching local teams in the Absa Premiership, Baxter surely has a better understanding of the local game now than he did back then. He has been incredibly successful in that time, winning two league titles, a Nedbank Cup and an MTN8 with Kaizer Chiefs, and the Nedbank Cup with SuperSport United.
3. He is well-connected worldwide and this could make it easy to organise friendly matches with a host of countries, particularly in Europe and Japan, where Baxter has coached. South Africa currently tend to face mainly African opposition in their friendly matches. Baxter would also surely provide the nous of a coach who knows that it is important to travel to Europe and look at the role Bafana players are being deployed in at their clubs.
Cons
1. The Scotsman has a Jose Mourinho-like approach to signing players that he has worked with at previous teams, when he is appointed at a new club. Baxter has recruited plenty of his Absa Premiership-winning squad from Kaizer Chiefs since being appointed by SuperSport at the start of 2016, despite the likes of Reneilwe Letsholonyane and Morgan Gould being on the wrong side of 30.
2. The 63-year-old seems only vaguely interested in coaching Bafana as he has made it clear he is comfortable and happy in Pretoria, coaching United. He is reportedly being offered R1 million per month to take over at Bafana, but it is hoped that it is not only the money that motivates his decision to move, if it happens. The South African Football Association have already been burned by paying an astronomical salary to Brazilian Carlos Alberto Parreira (R1.8m), who failed to get the team past the group stages at the 2010 Fifa World Cup on home soil.
3. Baxter’s impressive run with Kaizer Chiefs was tainted slightly by a lack of success in the Caf Champions League, where he was never able to get to the group stages. Baxter also endured a mediocre spell as coach of the Finnish national team between 2008 and 2010 where the nation plummeted down the world rankings and he was accused of favouring certain players (see point 1). As a counter-argument to Baxter’s relative success with Bafana between 2004 and 2005, meanwhile, he also enjoyed a far better squad back then, with strikers like Benni McCarthy and Shaun Bartlett at his disposal.