I recentlyheard Robin Petersen mentioning that he was going to ask for assistance from the German FA to help with our football development and saving the game in the country. And that’s a big concern for me because that means the whole Technical Master Plan (a football development document meant to revive SA football) would be useless, because we know what the Dutch and Germans FA’s will do. This is just another form of colonisation. They will send their coaches and once again, local football and the Technical Master Plan will be further diluted. I had some conversation with some people at Safa and they assured me that, that is not going to be the case, but until we see what happens and how they roll out the programme we can never be certain our football is about to be saved. Only if we could follow the Technical Master Plan and implement it our football would our football be saved. My concern is that having Petersen (heading the development agency) … he’s already been less successful as Safa CEO, running the organisation. And this is a very crucial programme. I still feel we can still find people in this country who have deeper technical insight into the game, including academic background to run it administratively. Yes, we need a pure Technical Director to roll out and implement the programme, but I still feel, even on the administrative or corporate side we can still get an appropriate South African. There are former players or students of the game from various research organisations; there are academics from universities, who are involved in football, who are academically very qualified. I feel we need to get the right match. We do need a Technical Director to roll out the Technical Master Plan, but the person who’s going to be helping them administratively should have some technical insight into the game. And I feel there are other people in this country, who can do that job, but I am not going to mention names.
Our clubs don’t even go far in African competitions. Our youth national team don’t even qualify anymore. In our qualifying games we struggle against Ethiopia and Botswana.
I am hoping now with the redeployment of people at Safa … Dennis Mumble assuming the role of the CEO (pending the Safa match-fixing investigation), things could finally turn out for the better. There are, however, other people who can add value and have the relevant expertise and I think those people with those kinds of backgrounds should be brought on board. The Master Plan could turn around football in this country going into the future and eventually take us to our rightful place. It’s critical that we have the right people to roll it out. If we don’t have the right people this football development initiative could turn out to be a huge waste of time. Without getting the right people we’ll still be doing what we are doing now, which is what has been done for the last 15 years under a whole lot of Technical Directors – recycling failure in local football. We don’t need that further!
I mean, yes we have produced numbers in coaches … quantities, but have we produced quality coaches? We haven’t! All our youth national teams and Bafana Bafana are failing and that shows that the quality of the coaching education is not up to standard.
The concept or the methodology that is going to be rolled out is of paramount importance as it has the potential to bring the local game out of the quagmire it is in right now or kill it even further. That is my main concern that I feel Petersen is not the right man to head up this programme.
Although they say he’s just going to supply administrative background, his technical credential are the key concern that I, and a lot of that technicians, in this country would worry about. Our identity is being so distorted and diluted so much that very soon we won’t have our own unique style of play. Not that there’s much of that now anyway. Have we not learnt anything from the KNVB errors of the early ‘90’s? I mean all these foreign ideologies that have been imposed on our football over the years have not helped us. That’s why I feel Petersen, especially with his German connections, is not the right man to head up this project. As much as they can sugar-coat it and say he’s just going to offer administrative support, but we know he’s already been in contact with the Germans. The Master Plan was drawn up by the South Africans for the South Africans. Wrapping up, we are less than 35 days before the start of the Afcon tournament and I’d hate to be in Gordon Igesund’s shoes right now. I think there are high expectations from the whole nation, especially since we are hosting the tournament. But my plea to everyone is that we’ve got to be realistic. We’ve got to look at the quality of our players. Are we there, or close by? I don’t think we are one of the top African nations anymore. It’s good to see some of the older, more experienced guys like Katlego Mphela and Benni McCarthy coming back to form. I think for the short term, players like that could come in and do a decent job. I would be happy if we reached at least the semifinal and anything more than that would be a bonus.
But I know Gordon has a tough job. Definitely, we don’t have too many quality players. You look at the foreign-based players … they are playing in minor leagues or are reserves abroad. So it doesn’t help much. But having some of our experienced players coming into form now could actually be a boost. To believe that we can win the tournament, I think it is very unrealistic. The class of ’96 was a far better class of players. They were of a definite higher quality. They had been playing together for a while. The team was a very stable team. The success of Orlando Pirates, the year before in the Caf Champions League, aided that. There was a lot of continuity and stability and the quality was definitely higher than what we have at the moment. For those reasons, it’s definitely unrealistic for the leadership or even the fans to expect us to win the tournament. Yes, we are hosting, but that doesn’t mean we have the divine right to win it because we’ve won it once before at home.
We have to be realistic and put things into perspective of where we are in the football world. Our clubs don’t even go far in African competitions. Our youth national team don’t even qualify anymore. In our qualifying games we struggle against Ethiopia and Botswana. We need to put things into perspective. Sudesh Sigh has worked with various club’s technical teams locally and abroad.
– By Analysis: Sudesh Singh
