The March 6 executive meeting of the South African Football Association (Safa) was billed as a meeting to solve the shenanigans affecting South African soccer, but turned out to be a damp squib.
The executive meeting failed to address pertinent issues such as the resignation of vice-president Irvin Khoza and the poor performance of the national team at the African Nations Cup in Tunisia. Both these issues did not get the much-publicised attention.
The Khoza issue was seen by the executive as not important, so it is to be addressed later in the year. The Nations Cup discussion was not detailed enough, specifically regarding problems such as players’ salary troubles before the start of the tournament, players staying up until the wee hours of the morning and the lack of patriotism in donning the Bafana Bafana jersey.
With these two issues sidelined, the next important point was the 2010 World Cup and Safa’s vote for Issa Haytou as Confederation of African Football president and not Ishmael Bhamjee. It was decided that Safa’s reasons would be explained to Bhamjee in due course.
Another issue was that Safa has to put its house into order: any more bickering could result in South Africa losing the World Cup bid. The 2010 bid is very important to the government, which has given the bid committee R20-million for lobbying.
The bid committee is expected to do a lot of travelling to encourage voting Fifa members to choose South Africa.
The government has pulled out all the stops to ensure that its embassies where Fifa voting members reside are updated with the bid process. President Thabo Mbeki is expected to write letters to presidents of Fifa voting members’ countries to encourage their voting members to select South Africa.
So crucial is the bid that former president Nelson Mandela could be roped in. Another bigwig from Africa who has voting powers is Caf President Issa Haytou, whose vote South Africa is also trying to win. South Africa only needs 13 of the 24 votes to win the right to host the World Cup in 2010.
The good news was that a committee has been elected to head-hunt for a Bafana Bafana coach. The new coach, who is expected to be announced on May Day, will be expected to qualify South Africa for both the Nations Cup and World Cup in 2006.
Twenty-nine coaches have applied for the Bafana Bafana coaching job, with the front-runner being Frenchman Roger Lemere, who recently won the Nations Cup with Tunisia and won the European Cup with France in 2000 before losing the 2002 World Cup in the first round with France.