The chief executive of the South African Football Association (Safa), Raymond Hack, said on Wednesday that he would like to believe that the current pay dispute with the Bafana Bafana players had no effect on the 2-0 loss to Guinea in their opening match of the African Nations Cup on Monday night.
Hack, speaking to Tim Modise on 702 Talk Radio from Cairo, said Bafana coach Ted Dumitru had explained the situation to the players during their training camp earlier this month.
”Ted told the players that this event was about playing for your country and not about the money. A fee was discussed and agreed to by the players, who signed contracts to that effect.
”Some of the players wanted changes to aspects of that contract, but that is something we’ll have to deal with when we get back to South Africa,” said Hack.
The Safa CEO added that it would be sad if any player had gone to Egypt purely for the cheque.
”We never forced anybody to play in this tournament, and it’ll be pretty disgusting if money was the only motivator.”
Dumitru — who was also on the programme but speaking from Alexandria, where Bafana are preparing for their second match, against Tunisia, on Thursday — admitted the South Africans had underestimated Guinea.
”But the tournament is not over yet; we can still win our next two matches and go through to the next round.”
He said there will be a few changes to the South African team, ”for technical reasons”.
When asked about the ”technical reasons”, Dumitru replied: ”You might have some Tunisian listeners and I don’t want to say too much and let on.” — Sapa