Faster and fitter legs — plus fresh minds please

WHEN Ephraim “Shakes” Mashaba shakes your hand, your whole body starts shaking.

How could it not, because the 63year-old who is built like a baobab tree is as tough as nails.

His fist is the size of a newborn baby’s head. You wouldn’t want that fist to have a joint venture with your jaw.

Were that to happen, it will leave your face deformed and your dental formula on the floor. You will need a major facial reconstruction.

That is why his appointment as the new Bafana Bafana boss makes sense — our senior national team has been crying out for some serious life-changing surgery for years.

Even world beaters Tahiti know they are in cosy company with our lads, whose stature is lower than a submerged submarine.

There are players whose place in the team is guaranteed more by the number of caps they’ve amassed than the performances they’ve delivered.

They last performed during the 2010 World Cup, that’s if our dismal on-field showing during our hosting of the global showpiece warrants being described as a performance.

Those hangers-on must go as in yesterday.

In must come new fresh faces, faster and fitter legs, sharper minds and selfless souls.

Bafana are in dire need of a strong coach who will make the agents know that his vice-grip hands will throttle any nuisance-making unwanted advances.

Mashaba is that and more. Don’t be misled by his gentle giant demeanour.

Beneath that lies a bastard, boasting a look that screams “don’t screw me ’cause I’ll screw you even harder and you’ll curse the day you were born”. Mashaba will do well to get an agent-repellent spray.

Some among us, hankering for a flamboyant foreign coach — read European — have sought to undermine Mashaba’s appointment. They belittle it as an appointment by default rather than design.

Only they know why they peddle such twaddle.

It’s a great pity that a similar song was not sung when Mashaba’s predecessor ascended to the throne.

He was neither high profile nor an international name. That appointment was hailed as the people’s choice.

I guess some of us apply different strokes for different folks. But that is a discussion for another day in a drinking hole somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

Back to Mashaba. Like we’ve seen to our chagrin with previous coaches, whether local or foreign, his appointment will not be the panacea to Bafana’s problems. Safa must create conducive conditions for Mashaba to perform to the optimum.

Their plan to have the junior coaches serving as assistants to their senior counterparts speaks of the penny finally dropping — continuity and uniformity are crucial cornerstones for progress.

See Safa, thinking is not painful. Planning is not suicidal.

The fathers of football must lay a solid foundation for the future by ensuring that the factories below the Bafana bazaar function flawlessly. No rocket science required.

That Safa-PSL joint liaison committee must be converted from a toothless talk-shop to a structure where binding decisions are taken with courage and implemented with conviction.

The fans need to get the story straight. When Safa said the 2015 Afcon was not crucial, some cried foul. Yet the same crowd complained that the mandate to the previous coach was unfair.

I’m certain that four years isn’t long enough for a successful Bafana surgery.

How long did it take Germany to win the World Cup since 1990?

Eventually they did it. How? There was political will. There was a national mission. There was no room to accommodate the egocentric officials. There was no room for selfcentred players, and egos played no part. The Germans were united by one vision and never flinched from their mission to attain it.

The world saw the fruits of their toil, sweat and blood in Brazil. Bafana won’t win the World Cup with Mashaba. My wish is for his vice grip to shake them from head to toe.