I won’t fail you, Shakes says of Maseru to Moscow mission
Hot Seat | Bafana Bafana’s new coach speaks to Bareng-Batho Kortjaas and gives him the lowdown on his plans
Why do you cry so much? I’m like that. Those are not tears of sadness. They were tears of joy, of cherishing the responsibility of carrying 50million-plus people that I need to bring smiles to their faces.
I’m an emotional person. When I do things, I do them with all my heart. What do you say to those who say you only got the job because you’re cheap and available?
I don’t know what that is based on. Mine is to prove that I was a worthy candidate. How do I do that? Deliver the results.
Some people say things for the sake of it so that when things don’t go well they can say we told you so. There’s a school of thought that says you’re not in tune with modern football trends. Without any fear, I’m on the mark when it comes to coaching. I doubt nothing about my ability and I can do nothing about those who doubt me. In September there’ll be a
They must play beyond my instructions. They must impose themselves on the game
Fifa symposium in Egypt to look at the latest coaching trends from the 2014 World Cup. Like all the progressive coaches in the world, I’ll be there. What is the biggest problem with coaching Bafana Bafana? It’s not coaching as such, it’s the kind of players we have on the field and the restrictions put on them. What kind of a player do you want? I want a player who’ll be able to play beyond the coach’s instructions. He’s got to look at the situation and be able to untangle himself from the spider web without the coach shouting.
Nowadays when things are not going well in a match, you don’t get a player that grabs the bull by its horns and changes things for the team. Won’t you turn around and say he’s defying the coach? Not at all. I want to encourage them to be able to take the initiative and improvise.
I want them to be bold, to impose themselves on the game. These people are not robots. When we get to the dressing room and I ask him why he did what he did, he should not scratch his head and say angazi [I don’t know] coach.
I don’t want them to do things for the sake of it. Everything they do must make sense. We have two main challenges — match intelligence and finishing. Match intelligence is . . . The ability to read and judge a situation and implement a decision that’s going to advance the team. He has to look, think and act all the time. He has to know when he’s doing it, where he’s doing it and why he’s doing it. The problem with finishing is . . . The technique, it’s killing us. When the ball comes, our players don’t know which part of the head to use. If it comes on the knee they don’t know how to control it. Down on the foot it is worse.
They don’t know which part to use to make contact with the ball for a volley or a straight shot.
For shooting and passing you have the side, instep, sole and outside of the foot.
Those are elementary things that must be drilled into them at the development stage. How are you going to revive Bafana when the bulk of junior national team players are not playing at their Premier Soccer League clubs? To be able to play, a player needs to participate. Competition is about participation. You can’t compete from your club’s bench straight into a World Cup match.
You’ll freeze on that pitch. Part of my assignment is to make sure that we come up with a new team made of younger players blended with experience.
That project will be helped a great deal by us having the courage to play the 17-, 18-, 19year-olds in the first teams of our professional leagues. Fixing our football needs a holistic approach.
But something is worrying me. Tell me about it. The signing of players. What about it? If we know we’re not going to use them, let’s allow them to play to get game time so that the day they are called to the national teams at all levels they are not rusty. Mamelodi Sundowns sign a lot of players but say you don’t play against us. There’s no problem with them buying players. When they loan them out I’m happy because it gives them a chance to play.
I’d be happier if they erase this clause that says you, if we loan you, you don’t play against us.
But how is Sundowns going to measure if these players are good?
They’ve got to let them play against them and see if they’re on their level.
That’s the only chance for Sundowns to see how good are those players when they play against them. Are you going to talk to Pitso Mosimane about this? I will. Not only coach Pitso, all the other coaches. Mind you, Sundowns are not breaking any laws. What I’m raising is what I see as what would work for club and country. But conversations with club coaches who deal with players everyday are crucial. We need a symposium to engage on how to revive the way we play. How do we revive it? We have to look at what the club coaches are doing. Players leave the club and come to Bafana to find that a different approach is applied. It confuses the players.
How do we want to play? How do we want our coaches to work?
What is expected of players? We need to have a brutally honest conversation around these questions. When is that going to happen? It should have started a long time ago. I won’t have time frames now. It depends on the availability of people. But the sooner the better.
The answers from that frank talk must inform a blueprint of our identity and we must make that the main focus point of our continuous work. In two words: Uniformity and continuity? Precisely. It is going to be a hard thing to do. But it is time to work harder than before. We know what we want at the top, a fully functioning Bafana. But the left hand must know what the right is doing.
So we have to bring all the coaches working at junior national team level whenever we have camps.
We will invite them to be part of what we’re doing so that they can cascade it to all national teams.
Fortunately, we have the coaching structures. It’s a back-to-back baptism of fire in five days next month — you’ll have Sudan in Khartoum and Nigeria in Cape Town. We’ll announce a bigger squad for both matches for a four-day camp. We have to finalise the technical staff. It’s going to be pretty hectic. I wish I could turn back the hand of time to give us more room to prepare. But I can’t and we just have to hit the ground running. What do you know about Sudan? Not much. I don’t want to tell lies. But I’ll sit down, do the research, study them and prepare accordingly. You were hounded out of your job in your first stint with Bafana. How confident are you that the words of support from your employers will be sustained through your fouryear tenure? When I left, it wasn’t because I was bad. My return puts pressure on me to better the results of my previous tenure. (Between 2002 and 2004, Bafana under Mashaba played 19 matches, winning 12, drawing five and losing two. They won the Cosafa Cup and qualified for Afcon 2004.) They said you were too emotional, lacked diplomacy. It centred around you refusing to allow interference in your team selection. Players that will be with Bafana are the patriotic ones who won’t be told to honour this call-up and not that one. However, if a player does not want to play for South Africa, what can I do?
If they are not interested, they must just tell us in good time so that we can make plans with those that want to move forward with the country. You won’t beg? I won’t force anyone. You can take a horse to the river but if it does not want to drink the water?
My observation is that the oomph was not there.
For the players to say I don’t want to go play for the national team is not on.
That is why it is important that we address that question of who are we. What is our approach to this game?
All of us, the players, coaches, administrators, club owners, supporters, the media, must be committed to reviving the kind of football we know we can play and bringing back joy to the faces of our people.
President came to camp and said we were starting a journey from Maseru to Moscow
Qualifying for the Russia 2018 World Cup will bring back more than smiles. Will you do it? When we were in Lesotho for the under-20 Cosafa Cup, the president [Danny Jordaan] came to camp and said we were starting a journey from Maseru to Moscow.
Prior to that, the under-17s won the zonal games. That team graduated to under-20s and we won the Cosafa Cup in Lesotho. Both the under-17 and under-20 are on the brink of qualifying for their respective African Youth Championship. Your message to South Africans? I appreciate them for putting me where I am. I know I’m nothing without their support. I know that there will be times when we hit turbulence. There’ll also be times when we cruise smoothly.
We must not be swallowed by each moment. When we win we must know that sometimes we’ll lose.
When we lose we must know that we have to repay that by winning. I want to thank my countrymen for their support in advance. I plan not to fail you.