In Gord, I do not trust! It is clear that Gordon Igesund is worse than Pitso Mosimane. The latter was castigated and labelled arrogant when he laid bare the facts about our deplorable state of football in the country following his 1-all draw against a lowly Ethiopia in the Fifa World Cup qualifying match.
Mosimane said, at the time, “”You see, (in) South Africa, we don’t want to accept reality – things have not been going well for us since we won the 1996 Afcon, but we are not changing the formula. We have a problem, but you are going the same way; we must do things right in terms of our development programmes. We don’t want to accept that the world is catching up with us. We don’t want to accept that we are not scoring goals. We don’t want to accept that our development programmes are not good.”
You don’t speak such truth as a Bafana Bafana coach and keep your job and it came as no surprise when he, soon after those remarks, kissed his fat salary goodbye.
And that’s exactly what makes Igesund worse than Mosimane. He’s not honest!
It has become virtually impossible to compete hence we continue to struggle against Ethiopia and Botswana and we couldn’t qualify for the past two Afcon tournaments and only qualified this time around by virtue of being hosts.
Since he took over the Bafana coaching reins Igesund has excelled in giving out mixed messages, arguing that he needed to boost the morale in the team while at the same time arguing that results were not important. Oops! He has failed to face the facts that Bafana are not as good as his bosses would like to believe and convince the entire nation as such, and in the process Igesund has succeeded in creating high and false expectations about Bafana Bafana’s realities and their chances in the upcoming Afcon tournament. Didn’t he say that we are going to see a different Bafana with new style with high pace actions – a style that would take another generation just to learn it and that there is going to be skill and creativity, etc.?
The reality is that with only a few days to go before the tournament, Bafana Bafana are not ready … in fact, they are way far from it.
There is no much difference between this ‘new’ Bafana Bafana team and the one played in 2011 and 2012. In fact, there is currently lesser creativity in the team than during the time when Steven Pienaar was still with the team.
Against Norway, we proved to be bankrupt tactically, with too many useless crosses against an opponent that could handle anything in the air. Bafana Bafana’s defenders should be giving Igesund nightmares going into this tournament. They were badly exposed by opponents who can use skill and remain composed, and our Group A opponents, Cape Verde, Morocco and Angola, must have definitely been analysing those weak points quite carefully.
Igesund’s dreams and illusion have definitely been crashed in the friendly matches he’s played so far. When clear scoring chances are wasted against defenders who are some of the slowest in Europe and can hardly make a turn in time to execute basic marking, then the issue of lack of quality players in the squad is petrifying.
But all these points about finishing, defending, and creativity are secondary issues. THE PRIMARY ISSUE HERE IS QUALITY – the lack of it in this country and until we get that right we may as well find better African teams to support on the international stage, because Bafana will never cut it. And this is neither about Igesund nor Mosimane. It is about SAFA and their indifferent attitude towards football in the country!
Since ’96 we have been on a downward spiral. Nothing was done to curb that and it became more and more difficult to compete internationally. Today, it has become virtually impossible to compete, hence we continue to struggle against Ethiopia and Botswana and we couldn’t qualify for the past two Afcon tournaments and only qualified this time around by virtue of being hosts. Yet, the situation is still not being arrested.
The pragmatists that predicted that Bafana was not good enough to advance beyond the group stages of the Fifa World Cup were labelled unpatriotic, among other things. But those realists would later be vindicated when the team became the first host team in the history of Fifa to be knocked out of the group stages of the World Cup.
There’s a lot of ill-advised noise now about the class of ’96 that won the Nation’s cup on home soil, but on closer look it’s actually an insult to those stars … the likes of Doctor Khumalo, Lucas Rabede, Mark Fish, etc. … it is an insult to draw comparisons between them and the quality of the current crop of players. We have not replaced those guys, which is why our 1998 star revelation, Benni McCarthy would still be in this 2013 team had it not been for his injury, fortunately … or unfortunately, you decide.
Call me unpatriotic too, but a quarterfinal finish would be a great achievement for Igesund’s boys.
But having coached in this country for such a very long time, the only trust I have in Gord, is that he knows the shortcomings of football in this country. He has won league championships with different clubs in SA. This man is very experienced. He knows Mosimane’s argument that a different coach was not going to be a solution to Bafana’s nightmares was spot on. It is for this reason that I have no doubt that after the tournament Igesund will change his tune.
He will definitely argue, “Did you expect me to tell my players they were not good enough going into the tournament?” A few days ago, Igesund came close to being as frank as Mosimane about our realities when he said, “We’ve got to have an identity that we can accept and know that this is the right way for us and have a plan for the next 10 years. It will be great for football. The kids of 10 years old, when they get to 20, they know exactly how and what’s our identity. We have never really had our own identity.”
But I am sure Igesund knows he was not the first to say that. I am a South African … to the core … and you know what, I HAVE TO support Bafana Bafana (just not blindly). Let’s count down…
– Sipho Kekana is a SABC Digital News Producer.
– By Comment: Sipho Kekana
