World Cup lessons from South Korea

Despite the recent hysteria, there was much to admire about Joel Santana who took the plunge by taking the reins of a national team (for the first time) which had the added responsibility of hosting the 2010 World Cup.

Despite a shaky start to his tenure 18 months ago, Bafana Bafana found their feet under Santana and produced some world-class football during the Confederations Cup, including a spectacular 3-2 extra-time defeat in the third-place play-offs against Spain, the top ranked side in the world.

What followed, however, was nothing short of catastrophic — one victory (against lowly Madagascar) in nine friendly internationals sealed Santana’s fate. The harsh reality is that there was always a concern about his defensive formations which saw too few goals being scored and Bafana plummeting to its lowest Fifa ranking ever (85th). At the end of the day, Santana’s inability to communicate in English and his testy relationship with the media accelerated his downfall.

Looking ahead, with just eight months remaining before the World Cup, the national squad needs a miracle. But history shows us that it can still be done. Take unfancied South Korea, for example. Ahead of the 2002 World Cup, which it co-hosted with Japan, the South Koreans under their new Dutch coach, Guus Hiddink, lost 5-0 to both France and the Czech Republic. Their World Cup dreams were all but dead and buried and their ambitions for 2002 (like South Africa’s for 2010) did not realistically extend beyond being polite hosts.

But all that changed when Hiddink took his charges into a lengthy training camp ahead of the tournament. And the rest is history. Fuelled by the national pride of millions of fans, South Korea set the tournament alight with victories over Poland, Portugal and Italy and they made it through to the semi-finals where they lost 1-0 to Germany.

This wasn’t a once-off. There have been other giant killers at previous World Cup tournaments, including Cameroon and Senegal. There are lessons — and parallels — here and South Africa’s performances in the later stages of the Confederations Cup demonstrated that in the right circumstances, particularly with home-ground advantage, almost anything can happen.