Where is the pipeline?

“WHEN ONLY FIVE PLAYERS MADE THE TRANSITION, THAT MEANS YOU HAVE THROWN AWAY THE SIX-YEAR JOURNEY.”

The South African Under-23 national team side, coached by David Notoane, travelled to Tokyo for the Olympic Games tournament. When it come to an end – will the players be able to make a smooth transition into the senior national team? Our Secret Footballer – a former Olympian himself – believes this will not be a simple process.

In an ideal world it should be easy for Under-23 national team players to make a transition to the senior side, but there is nothing ideal about our world. This South African Under-23 squad which is at the Olympics in Tokyo resembles our squad from Sydney Olympics in 2000. A lot of them are playing regular football for local PSL teams and that was the same with us.

We also had Quinton Fortune, Delron Buckley, Benni McCarthy and Aaron Mokoena, who were playing regular football in well-established leagues in Europe. Perhaps that is the main difference.

After the Olympics, naturally, these players would get slowly drafted into the senior national team squad, but often, and in our experience as well, there is just way too many gatekeepers.

There are too many people with ulterior motives at senior national team level – that is what I feel stopped our progression into Bafana Bafana. I often ask myself, what is the point of having national youth teams – Under-17, Under-20 and Under-23 if those things are happening?

That has to change, but I don’t see that happening any time soon. We have to stop this habit of agents sitting in team hotel receptions, technical directors, club owners and coaches all getting involved with the senior national team when it should only be one person and his backroom staff.

It’s unfortunate, but that is the reality at the moment in South Africa, there is no natural progression.

From our national Under-20 team which went to 1997 World Cup [ World Youth Championships], 13 of those players went to the Sydney Olympics in 2000, but after that only five became Bafana Bafana regulars and that is not good enough.

When only five players made the transition, that means you have thrown away the six-year journey of building a team, which is unfortunate.

I’m not saying everybody should have been pushed through to Bafana Bafana because that is not football, but the core of that team should have progressed. And that did not happen.

Making overseas moves

But I hope that some of the guys who are in Tokyo will get a chance to move overseas because there will be lots of scouts watching the tournament. Harry Redknapp, who was the manager of West Ham in 2000, saw me when we beat Brazil 3-1 and invited me to come to London for trials.

That was the closest I got to play in the English Premiership, and they were really keen to sign me but unfortunately my club Mamelodi Sundowns asked for 1.5 million Pounds, which was ridiculous at the time.

I think Stanton Fredericks also went overseas, which was a combination of playing well at the Olympics and in the friendly match against England in South Africa. A lot of scouts do go to the Olympics and it’s a fantastic opportunity for players to showcase their talent and go overseas.

If they play well enough, they will go overseas, and I hope that they will perform better than we did and reach the knockout stages. They have talent and capabilities; I’m just worried about the preparation time. Did David Notoane have enough games for the team to gel? That is the question.

For us we had a six-year build up, we played in Toulon tournaments in France where we were up against England and France. We came up against players like

Thierry Henry and Nicolas Anelka. All that experience meant a lot when it came to the Olympics.

The point of those competitions is not results but to give players exposure and experience the atmosphere, so that when we get to the senior Nations Cup or World Cup, we have an idea of what’s coming.

Overage Players

I know that there will be players over the age of 23, but I have seen the other goalkeeper, Sifiso Mlungwana, and he has been impressive. In my opinion, Mlungwana is a player for the future.

But the issue of overage players was also conundrum for us as well because a coach has a team that qualified and now he has to bring in overage players as well. Are you going to upset the equilibrium of the team when you bring in overage players?

That is always the issue the coach has to deal with. But we have a very exciting young squad and hopefully they will reach the knockout stages so that we can see the core of the team progress into Bafana.

The first game at the Olympics is key. With us we lost the opening match against Japan and we beat Brazil 3-1. Our real downfall was the third game against Slovakia – we had just beaten Brazil and psychologically – did we underestimate Slovakia?

The two goals that we conceded were very poor and the chances that we missed were unbelievable. But that is tournament football, if you don’t take your chance you get punished. Lady luck was not our side.