With dunces in charge, pitiful team remain laughing stock
I had a dream, an extraordinary dream at that. I dreamt I was playing for the decorated and world-renowned Springboks alongside our current humble skipper Siya Kolisi.
The only problem about my dream (which, I must emphasise, didn’t dampen my spirits) was that I could recall neither the opposition nor the actual winners of the Test.
I felt great that I actually had this dream, even though I can’t remember whether I played in my favourite No 10 position, where I can picture myself embarrassing Naas Botha in the number of drop goals I would actually score when deployed in that role.
What I do recall is that I was wearing one of my favourite Tshirts on the night I had the dream. It was one of those produced by a beverage company some time in 2019, encouraging South Africans to support Bafana Bafana and the Springboks, who were going to compete in major battles that year.
While the Kolisi-led Boks lifted the Webb Ellis trophy for the third time in their history in November, Bafana bombed out in the quarterfinals of the Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt, maintaining their now over 24 years of famine in this competition.
It was when I realised the gulf between Bafana and our Springboks that my wonderful dream turned a little sour. I asked myself why I couldn’t dream the same thing about Bafana, but then I realised that would require me to immediately consult a sangoma to find out if I don’t have an obscure illness of some sort or excessive that I need to quickly detox from my system.
While our Springboks find themselves on top of the world after their triumph in Tokyo in 2019, Bafana are languishing in 71st position in the latest Fifa world rankings, and 13th on the continent.
Bafana’s situation has been worrying since 2002, the last time our team actually qualified for a World Cup.
Even hosting the single-greatest sporting event on Earth in 2010 didn’t help sharpen our boys. Instead we became the laughing stock of the world when we were ejected in the first round — the first hosts to earn that horrible title.
There are plenty of absurd things about our football. While our professional league, the Premier Soccer League, is ranked 10th in the world, the quality of our football and of our senior men’s team remains the biggest mystery.
Whether Molefi Ntseki’s charges are capable of reaching Qatar 2022 is in doubt, starting with the fact that the continent has to produce five representatives and we’re now ranked 13th before we even start kicking the ball in anger in real qualification.
Our football authorities have a big responsibility to find a quick solution to why we’re no longer producing players capable of featuring in the top leagues in the world.
If we have no players competing in Germany’s Bundesliga, Italy’s Serie A, Spanish La Liga and England’s Premier League, then it means we can’t expect our players to compete on the world stage.
It’s as simple as that.
You compete with the best to match the best. Not so?
We have a couple of players in the French top league, but that can’t be enough to help Ntseki turn around our fortunes, even on the continent.
Our problems start in our domestic league where we don’t even have locals who are constantly scoring more than 15 goals in a season.
Of late, even our goalkeeping department, which was teeming with talent not so long ago, is a shadow of its former self, with keepers like Uganda’s Dennis Onyango now considered the shining light and leading the foreign contingent right under our noses.
For Bafana to climb the ladder, both on the continent and in the world, our players have to start dominating every position in the PSL, and there has to be a drive to get our best to play for the big teams in the world.
The last time we heard a name familiar to us in the EPL was three years ago, when we still had Steven Pienaar. Who can recall when we last heard of a South African doing wonders in the Bundesliga, La Liga or Serie A? Yet we once had the late
Philemon Masinga, Siyabonga Nomvethe, Delron Buckley, Sibusiso Zuma and many of our former great Bafana players competing, not just sitting on the bench, in these leagues.
So when Safa, the supposed custodian of our football, announced yet another technical committee a few days ago, my mind raced at the huge task facing this committee.
And no matter how much I tried to gather courage, I just couldn’t muster any hope that they’ll deliver anything different to what we’ve seen in the past 12 years, during which our football has been in the doldrums.
It’s a committee of 18, with former Bafana stalwarts Lucas Radebe, David Nyathi, Helman Mkhalele, and coach Ntseki and football analyst Farook Khan among the great names.
While there’s a Safa member, Jack Maluleke, and legend Buddha Mathathe appointed as chair and deputy chair respectively, something big is amiss: there’s no-one appointed as technical director.
Isn’t decisiveness one of the vital traits we’ve been missing in our football? If this isn’t like buying a shiny new car without a driver, I don’t know what is.
That has been the missing link in our football: decisive leadership and leadership that elects people who are well qualified and capable of doing a particular job.
The sooner Safa has leadership who put the players, coaches and fans at the core of their service, the better it will be for our football. But right now we’re at the mercy of dunces who are messing us around like the way they’ve just done with this oversized technical committee which has no leader in charge of its core business.
With that in mind I might as well continue dreaming more about our mighty Springboks while our football nightmares continue to unfold right in front of our eyes. What a pity.