Baxter for Bafana? Really, Danny, really?

THE spinning merry-go-round that is the search for the Bafana Bafana coach is about to come to a screeching stop.

This occurrence will happen as soon as Stuart Baxter crosses the t’s and dots the i’s of a R1-million a month salary the stewards of the South African Football Association (Safa) have scribbled.

Having granted permission for negotiation, SuperSport United have only one instruction: Baxter will leave at the end of the current Premier Soccer League (PSL) campaign.

Baxter’s return to the position he vacated 14 years ago will not be without attrition. It will put into question Safa’s logic in arriving at that decision.

Here’s why: Safa fired Shakes Mashaba for, among a litany of reasons, shunning certain players. On that score, substituting Shakes with Stuart is akin to jumping from the pan straight into the fire.

Why? Because Baxter was guilty of a similar crime during his time coaching the national team of Finland.

There, he stood accused of “failing to establish communicative relationships with some of the key players in the squad, favouring certain players instead”.

If Safa gave Mashaba the heave-ho because of, among a litany of reasons, poor relations with the media, replacing him with Baxter will be commensurate with swopping a bull terrier with a raging bull.

Why? Because when results weren’t forthcoming in Finland, the journalists asked hard questions. Baxter didn’t call them small boys but apparently attacked them for not understanding football well enough in order to evaluate his performance.

For all intents and purposes it looks like his time with the Finland national team was a tumultuous two-year reign.

The biggest challenge with Baxter, as many observers have opined in confidence, is that he has shown himself to have zero appreciation for the African competition, a crucial prerequisite for the next Bafana coach. He showed this lack of appetite at Chiefs, where he attained the success of two league titles and two cups, and he qualified for the Confederation of African Football Champions League.

If he protests to the contrary, why then did his assistant coach Doctor Khumalo travel with the team to Ivory Coast for a Confederation Cup assignment while Baxter stayed put in South Africa?

He failed to get Chiefs to the group stages in two consecutive years. If the argument against Mashaba was how will he get Bafana to qualify for the 2018 World Cup if he failed to get them to Afcon 2017, do Safa really believe Baxter will take Bafana to Afcon 2019 in Cameroon when he could not get Chiefs to the group stages?

It seems when Baxter has a liking for players, he really can’t help himself.

Even a blind man can notice that he is mirroring Matsatsantsa in the image of his previous club.

SuperSport is awash with so many former Chiefs players — Reyaad Pieterse, Morgan Gould, Tefu Mashamaite, Keegan Ritchie, Reneilwe Letsholonyane, Kingston Nkhatha, Mandla Masango — creative fans have taken to calling it Chiefs lite.

Here is another quandary. Safa makhulubaas Danny Jordaan has got Bafana on a tight leash. His hidden hand was evident in the last two matches. The coalition of the wounded, chief among them Kamohelo Mokotjo and Kermit Erasmus, are back in the Bafana saddle. The team is teeming with exciting youngsters brimming with promise and the man Safa are talking to has a pitiful record when it comes to playing the younglings.

He was a flop at Bafana the first time round. He came to Chiefs and won four trophies. But as Gordon Igesund and the late Ted Dumitru discovered to their horror, international football is a different terrain. Doing well in the PSL does not guarantee success at national team level.

We won’t be world-beaters if we can’t conquer the continent.

For all intents and purposes, Baxter’s time with the Finland national team was a tumultuous two-year reign