Safa opt for a ‘cheap option’ in Baxter

Until we are in a position where our football is money- generating like the likes of Brazil who are continuously churning young talent and exporting it to the top leagues of Europe, we can forget about attracting top class coaches.

Sure Brazil have a long history of developing talent. Yet like us, they are a third world country that is not strong economically. But they have developed a model that works.

Whereas local clubs are solely concerned with doing well in the PSL – or just surviving – the Brazilians have realised the value of properly nurturing young talent.

Their local league is merely a platform for talent to showcase itself to the outside world. The huge monies European clubs pay for those youngsters is ploughed back into the clubs’ development structures and more talent gets churned out – an ever-spinning wheel.

Because of that, the national team is never short of talent to pick from.

It is about time we stopped thinking a good coach is going to sort out our national team problems. For the source of it runs much deeper than great coaching at the highest level.

We need to start treating our football as proper business – solid and working development structures, good coaching and competent administration and high class technical people at all levels. Our clubs must stop relying solely on grants, competition prize-monies and sponsors. They need to be able to generate money through developing players for export. Until then, we are going nowhere fast.

And no matter how hard we try to disguise it, ours will remain a low tier national team that will struggle to get the top coaches we seem to think we deserve. Instead we will get stuck with the likes of Baxter who let us down big time way back.