The South African Football Association ‘s executive committee on Wednesday suspended Bafana Bafana coach Shakes Mashaba — on the eve of the squad’s departure for Mauritius where they play the home side in a Cosafa Cup match on Saturday as part of their build up for the African Nations Cup finals.
In a brief statement after the executive committee meeting held at the Johannesburg International Airport hotel, Safa chief executive officer Albert Mokoena stated that the committee had suspended Mashaba for breach of his contract with the country’s controlling soccer body.
”It was resolved that Mashaba be suspended for seven days,” said Mokoena.
Mashaba has a week to remedy the problems otherwise he will be out of a job as national coach.
Mokoena said that the executive committee had taken the resolution to suspend Mashaba with immediate effect because the head coach had broken his contract with Safa: ”Mashaba has been informed telephonically of our decision and a hand delivered letter has been sent to him.”
Mokoena’s statement said that Mashaba breached his contract with the association in two areas:
”Firstly Mashaba failed to monitor and identify all national player information by selecting players for the national squad that were injured or that had not played for their respective clubs for a long period.
”Secondly he (Mashaba) failed to use his best endevours to promote the interest of the national team resulting in players retiring early from the national team.”
Mokoena said that Mashaba had been given seven days to remedy these two points: ”It is possible if Mashaba comes up with the remedy for those problems we could re-instate him.”
However, the knives have been out for Mashaba for some time because of his inflexible approach to overseas based players joining the African Nations Cup squad later than Saturday’s deadline for players to be in camp.
Mashaba refused a request to allow striker Benni McCarthy of Portuguese club Porto and Charlton Athletic defender Mark Fish to join the camp later this month.
McCarthy retired from international soccer due to the problem while Fish withdrew from the squad to travel to Tunisia after being selected in Mashaba’s 22-man squad named last month.
Mokoena announced that Bafana assistant coach Styles Phumo would be in charge of the squad to play Mauritius. The squad jets out to Mauritius on Thursday morning.
The move by Safa means that Fish and McCarthy and other overseas based players could be back in contention for a place in what will be a revised squad to be named after next Wednesday’s executive meeting where Mashaba will present his case and a decisions on his future will be finalised. – Sapa