The Bafana puzzle: All is not lost

Everybody loves a winning team but then Bafana are just not doing it. The current Bafana Bafana set-up is not the greatest since South Africa’s re-admission to international football in 1992. A lot of questions have to be asked: who are the best coaches to lead the national team? Is local good or do we need to go international as we have done in recent times? Is the national football body, South African Football Association, or the Premier Soccer League to blame? Do we have to point a finger at the Premier Soccer league for not doing enough in terms of development and establishing a reserve league? What is happening to the country’s development structures?

Firing coaches

The rapid firing of coaches hasn’t really helped the national set-up. So far evidence doesn’t favour the national body. Coaches have been fired on the eve of big tournaments, Clive Barker was discarded in December 97 just a few weeks before the beginning of the 1998 African Nations Cup. Carlos Queiroz was dismissed on the eve of the 2002 African Nations Cup even with a very good record of having qualified the team for both the World Cup and the nations cup. In 2004, on the eve of yet another nations cup, Shakes Mashaba was dismissed because he didn’t want to give some of his overseas-based players more time with their clubs until just a few days before the tournament kicked off. He had the right to do that because Fifa law stipulates that all players called up by their national teams for Fifa-recognised tournaments have to report 14 days prior to the tournament kick-off. South Africa is on 13 coaches in 15 years or so, which means that every coach had on average, a year and 2 months to work with the national team. Look at this:

Coaching contracts

If you look at the established super powers of world football, their coaches are never offered 2-year contracts as is done here, they get 4+ years. Coaches need time to build their own teams and identify their own players so that they can play to their philosophy. Sven-Goran Eriksson led England from 2001 to 2006 leading them to quarterfinals at two World Cups and one Euro tournament. Fabio Capello has been enjoying success recently with the England team, it was the same team that was constructed by Eriksson. Carlos Dunga was made the coach of Brazil after the 2006 world cup with the mandate of leading them to 2010. He experimented with the team when he took over but after a while he settled for one that did the job for him and recently won the 2009 Confederations Cup. It just goes to show that if coaches are given more time to build their own team, they can be a success. If a coach is given a contract after a World Cup to lead the team to the next one, obviously they will be pitfalls along the way but we have to let them lead that team to the next World Cup.

Local vs foreign

Statistics have proven that local is best for Bafana. Local coaches have enjoyed more success when leading the team than foreign coaches. Barker who is South Africa’s longest serving and most successful coach played 43 matches, won 22, drew 9 and lost 12. He had a 51.2% success rate. Trott Moloto coached Bafana 34 times, won 17 matches, drew 9 and lost 8 with a success percentage of 46 whereas Shakes Mashaba led the team in 20 matches, won 12, drew 5 and lost 3 with a success rate of 60%. Foreign coaches don’t have that much success. Stuart Baxter led Bafana to 23 matches, he won 10 matches, drew 6 and lost 7 with a success rate of 43.5%. Queiroz coached Bafana to 20 matches, winning 9, drawing 7 and losing 4 with a success percentage of 45 and lastly Philippe Troussier led Bafana to 6 matches winning none, drawing 4 and losing 2 with a 0% success. If we add all the figures Bafana have a 52.4% of performing better with a local coach at the helm than 29.5% in the hands of a foreign coach.

Player development

There are a lot of players that seem to be falling through the cracks especially with the junior national teams and some talents that go unnoticed and wasted. Development structures have to be built in each province then coaches from each go all over the province doing trials for players from as young as 8 years old. Then they are roped into this structures, use this structures to secure all the promising young players for the future of the national team. Argentina used the same model where Jose Pekerman went to all corners of Argentina to search for talent, results were there for all to see as Argentina has won 5 of the last 7 world youth cups. What happened to the Under-23 team that was at Sydney Olympics in 2000, they should be the backbone of the team right now or the Under-20 that had the likes of Steven Pienaar and Nasief Morris. They should be some of the players representing the national team right now but so far from that group it’s only Pienaar. Clubs are also not doing their bit to produce young players for the national team. Maybe a subsidised scheme needs to be put in place with club youth structures. Some clubs just can’t cope with running a soccer academy because of the costs involved. But then they are given some money for development. Producing one player a year for their senior team could lessen the burden on poor clubs. At the end of the day, more needs to be done for grassroots soccer and then we will see the results start to trickle all the way from the Under-17 national team to the senior national team.

Hope

Although besieged by all this problems, there is hope. We can take heart from the shock Greece caused at Euro 2004 by winning when nobody had tipped them to go even beyond the first round. There is also the run of South Korea to the semi-finals when they were hosts in 2002 or the Turkish team that reached the semi-final of Euro 2008 against all odds when they didn’t have their talisman in Nihat Kahveci or midfield maestro in Emre Belozoglu robbed of their talents because of injuries. At the end of the day, we need heroes in the current Bafana team, someone needs to stand up and be counted. We shouldn’t be crying foul saying that so and so are not available. With the Bafana class of 96, it didn’t matter who played, they had Doctor Khumalo, Philemon Masinga, John “Shoes” Moshoeu and Mark Williams to name just a few who stood up to be counted when it mattered. We will have to be patient and wait for that miracle to hit us.