Safa a study in utter mediocrity
MISSED A TRICK: ‘VISION 2022’ SHOULD HAVE BEEN 2018
Sy Lerman
The potential ability of South African footballers has not diminished, despite the dismal downward slide of Bafana Bafana results and achievements over the past 15 years.
This is the view expressed by former Bafana coaches Augusto Palacios and Gordon Igesund in a post-mortem yesterday on South Africa’s failure to qualify for next year’s World Cup finals in Russia.
“South Africa were able to win the Africa Cup of Nations in 1996, qualify for the World Cup in 1998 and 2002 and climb to a world ranking of 17th,” points out Palacios. “But rankings have slipped to the regions around 80th and apart from competing automatically as the host nation in 2010, World Cup finals appearances have been non-existent.
“And,” according to Igesund, “the most disturbing indictment is that the potential ability of the players has not deteriorated”.
Both Palacios and Igesund believe the advancement of Bafana on the international stage was primarily halted by the the lack of a uniform, professional and consistent programme to mould the players into an effective unit.
Instead of continuity, however, what was hailed on its launch by Safa a couple of years ago as a newly-devised panacea for our ailments, was a vague “Vision 2022” programme.
But what “Vision 2022”, trumpeted by Safa president Danny Jordaan, achieved was to blind the administration to the urgent issues pertaining in 2017 in general and qualifying for the 2018 World Cup finals in particular.
Why belatedly devise a new programme for South Africa to reach a respected international level by 2022 when such a status had already been acquired as far back as 1996 when the Africa Cup of Nations was won and two World Cups were reached in succession?
Now, with the usual, hysterical “blame game” pursued after Bafana Bafana finished bottom of the qualifying group, it is Safa who stand culpable for the failure to make it to Russia next year.
They dithered for six months after the stormy dismissal of Shakes Mashaba towards the end of last year, before eventually coming up with Stuart Baxter.
But planning and producing disciplined, professional and inventive performances on a consistent basis should have been the immediate target – not in 2022.