The past few weeks have seen close to 10 national team head coaches who were at the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Egypt vacating their jobs and this followed different results achieved by these teams at the tournament.
Amongst them have been head coaches of Namibia Ricardo Mannetti, Morocco’s Herve Renard, Egypt’s Javier Aguirre, Tanzania’s Emmanuel Amunike, Uganda’s Sebastien Desabre and few others.
Very soon the South African Football Association (SAFA) will have to sit down with current Bafana Bafana head coach Stuart Baxter and map the way forward.
SAFA President Danny Jordaan has reiterated that they need a coach who will be pro youthful talent.
Jordaan is back in South Africa this week following the conclusion of the AFCON tournament which was won by Algeria last Friday whilst Baxter is believed to be on holiday in Sweden but will be back in SA soon.
Despite having been to the U17 World Cup, two U20 World Cups and the Olympic games in the past four years, Bafana still went to Egypt with a squad which was the second oldest team at the tournament after Madagascar. Jordaan says Bafana is not short of youthful talent that can compete at the highest level.
It was for the first time that Bafana had managed to win a game in the knockout phase at the AFCON since 2000 in Ghana as they won two matches against Namibia and Egypt but lost to Ivory Coast, Morocco and Nigeria.
They dropped out in the quarterfinals but Jordaan has termed this a successful campaign.
From his engagements with the media in Egypt, it’s been clear that Baxter is already thinking beyond Bafana Bafana and it will be interesting to see if he will be retained going to the international friendly matches in September and also the AFCON 2021 qualifiers in November.
SABC Sport journalist Velile Mnyandu caught up with Jordaan
– Report by Velile Mnyandu
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