Another one bites the dust

There we go again

A disappointed Igesund when he heard that SAFA won't keep him beyond August

The marry-go-round of South African Football has started again and the grinding machine does not seem to stop firing coaches. Whoever is next on that hot seat will not last even the mere 2 years. As Ted Dumitru has said, South African brand of football is long overdue and honestly, whoever takes that seat won't last unless someone at SAFA house understand that the reason Brazil are five times world champions is because in all those golden years, they were playing their own home-grown brand.

I am not saying foreign coaches are bad; all I am saying is it will take time for a local coach to get the correct combination but in time, results will come. Do we only want a quick fix as a footballing nation or we want consistency the results? That will not happen overnight. My point is; the sacking of Igesund was premature. Didn't Bafana at some stage under the very same Gordon upset the current world champions on home soil? Isn’t this man's track record at the helm of the national team enough to make him keep his job?

My plea to Dany Jordan and the rest of his crew: put the interests of South African football before your own personal glory. We all know that you are a good administrator of football hence under your leadership we were able to stage the best World Cup ever on African soil, but at the moment it’s not about wielding that axe just because you can. Think about our football in say 10 years from now. Where will Bafana Bafana be at that time? The only tournament that they will play is the COSA FA...that because no one really has to qualify for that, or we will play big tournaments only if we get to host them, like it has been the trend in the past four years (2010 World Cup included).

It’s about time someone put the country first now that Madiba is gone.

Politics in our football

I do not in a single sense condone the failure to utilize the home-ground-advantage of the boys but my problem is embarrassing the family men like that in the media.

The pain of watching the helpless Bafana go down out of the group stages as hosts is unbearable, ask any soccer loving South African and they will tell you. In fact, truth be told our senior national team has NEVER qualified for any major tournament after 2004. They were always handed a ticket as hosts or having to sit with us and watch other 'boys' on TV. Who can forget the pain of crashing out of the 2010 World Cup of which they had failed to qualify for as well after a defeat to Uruguay.

My point in all this the Footballing body in the country SAFA needs a proper restructuring on its own and be manned by the former footballers but that does not mean that we should allow politics to interfere with the beautiful game. The sports minister took liberty in hauling all sorts of insults to the national team, even going as far as singling out the keeper. What does the minister expect his utterances to do to Moeneeb Josephs as a person? Some may argue that it is a constructive criticism but i beg to differ, knowing personally that you have let the country down is one thing, but having the leaders of the same country label you a loser and a disgrace on national television is another. 

I am sure we are not ready as a country to face the Benni vs Bafana issue in future because now our players are afraid of making mistakes since it will be all talk of town. we have a lot of aspiring and talented youngsters who can  play at the highest level but will they agree to play for the national team because the first mistake they make will be on the news all week. We recently endured another debacle of that nature with the talented Thulani Serero  apparently faking an injury and your Steven Pienaar retiring from the national team. Expect a lot of this kind of stories in future if the politicians do not canvas for the elections but instead insult the boys. 

This may even turn worse if FIFA decides to imporse what it did to the country during the Apartheid regime. Isn't this the very same reason why the country's sports were banned from international stage? Because of political interference? 

can the politicians of this country stick to their manifestos and let the football legends deal with the crisis we are facing as the football fraternity please...

As I see it…