Safa should be accountable for taking so long to name Shakes’ successor

UNTIL last Friday, I was a firm believer in accountability. Danny Jordaan, the Safa president who is fresh from winning a seat on the Caf executive, had me rattled just a little bit with his comments when asked why he’d still not appointed a Bafana Bafana coach three months after Shakes Mashaba was sacked.

Don’t worry, I am back now – more alert than ever and ready to keep asking the tough questions. But my goodness, for a brief moment you had me between a rock and a hard place, Mr Jordaan. Just in case you missed the Safa president’s reaction to what we journalists, the man in the street and probably even the coaches waiting with bated breath for the call, thought was a relevant question given the current situation, here is a recap. The man sounded incredibly peeved.

“There is no confusion. We have one person who we are dealing with. You (the media) are creating the confusion. We will let you know when we announce the coach,” the Safa boss said. Maybe he is right, I thought. Maybe we should have just refrained from working our sources to have first right to knowing who the new coach will be. Despite the fact that Safa had set a deadline to announce Mashaba’s successor at the end of February, we should never have asked “Why the delay?” when there was no coach in sight when the scheduled date came and went, I tried to convince myself.

Nonsense, I fought back. It was a real inner battle.

We had every right to hold them accountable. You can’t have the mother body doing as they please, pulling the wool over our eyes, especially in what is now a clear sign that the procedure has to some extent been bungled. There is no doubt in my mind that attempting to find the right man to take the Bafana job is no easy task, but Jordaan and the search committee didn’t have to put themselves under so much pressure. With the national team’s first official match only in June, rushing to hire someone at the end of February seemed like they were over-reaching, never mind the sideshow created by the man who had just been axed.

Mashaba, who is claiming his dismissal was unfair, still has a case pending at the CCMA.

This could have been handled better, and the press shouldn’t take the flak for speculating and keeping the story alive. Perhaps the narrative would have been slightly different if Jordaan had been more transparent. There was a shortlist of at least five coaches, three of whom were approached and offered the job. These were Carlos Queiroz, Herve Renard and Hugo Broos, apparently a shoo-in to become Bafana coach until his agent wanted a 20 percent cut of his annual salary. Well done to Jordaan for showing balls of steel and not giving in to yet another greedy football agent.

But it’s important to reiterate that had Safa gone public with regular updates regarding the search for a coach, they would probably have earned some sympathy from the press and the public. Instead they accused us of being impatient.

Hopefully some sort of lesson has been learnt here.