BBK UNPLUGGED
Igesund needs a shrink
NEYMAR hat-trick as Brazil hammer SA! Neymar shines as Brazil punish hapless Bafana! Brazil demolish South Africa! Brazil rout hapless Bafana!
These are the headlines that greeted Bafana Bafana’s record margin of defeat this week.
A drubbing, a thrashing, a rout and suchlike were some of the adjectives that accompanied reports reflecting South African soccer’s night of shame.
Yet, the man in charge sees nothing wrong. Judging by his statements, it is obvious that Gordon Igesund is oblivious to the fact that he has overstayed his welcome.
Here’s what Igesund had to say after the game:
“I don’t think the scoreline [blah, blah, blah] 5-0 is a lot. The first goal and the third goals were bad ones to concede. But we didn’t sit back [yada, yada, yada], we made a game of it.”
This man has lost his marbles. He needs to have his head read.
Despite all these headlines that stated the obvious, Igesund thinks Bafana played well?
It is one-man’s opinion against a nation of 50-million who witnessed a shambles of a whitewash on a woeful Wednesday night.
What does this man mean when he says they played well?
Where is well in Bafana being butchered, not by one or two, or three or four, but five goals to nothing by Brazil in their own back yard?
I reckon the only thing they did well was to make him the first coach to preside over the nation’s record defeat.
And he thinks that is well because the figment of his imagination informs him that they played well. Oh well.
Gordon is as good as gone. Safa won’t fire him now. They’ll have to pay him the remainder of his contract, which expires after the World Cup.
They fired Pitso Mosimane and he took them to court, and they only settled the matter early this month. Bumblers and fumblers that they are, they won’t repeat the same mistake.
But Igesund is finished, with no more room to manoeuvre.
It is all a pity because he got the job on a groundswell of public support in 2012.
“In GI I trust” became the mantra of many supporters who rallied around him.
His cheerleaders put him on a pedestal, passed him around as some kind of Messiah.
And boy, did he hit the ground running. The man announced his arrival on the international arena with a defiant display against Brazil. Yes, it was a defeat. But Bafana got a standing ovation from the hard-to-please Brazilians, who booed their own team and called Neymar popcorn.
But Igesund gradually lost the plot over time. He became his own worst enemy with shocking selections, eyebrowraising exclusions and disdain for criticism.
“I hope you’re happy with yourself BBK,” he once said in an SMS to me after a critical column.
I didn’t respond because I choose to entertain my children, ahead of banality, on my off-days. Unlike coaches, who entertain agents.
When some of us raised his inconsistencies and discrepancies, his cheerleaders came out in full force.
In spite of failing to fulfil mandates set by his employers, the Igesund media battalion insisted he was the best thing since sliced bread.
With every failure he shifted the goalposts, aided and abetted by sweetheart interviewers seemingly intent on not upsetting the applecart.
Presumably fearful of falling out of favour with the Messiah? He believed the propaganda and turned a blind eye to a simple fact of life — you cannot paper over the cracks forever. Sooner or later you get found out, and found out he is.
The good thing is that the public can hear and see these things when they play themselves out on radio stations and publications that unashamedly treat one coach with a razor-sharp machete and another with kid gloves.
Another good thing is that while you can fool some people some of the time, you cannot fool all the people all the time.
The people have got brains. They can tolerate bull manure to a degree. But once they are
gatvol, you feel their angst. I get the sense the people are
gatvol of double-speak, gatvol of overpromise, gatvol of underdelivery, gatvol of being taken for a ride.
Goodbye Gordon. Swallows are calling.
@bbkunplugged99