Bafana Bafana is being run by a bunch of amateurs and the national soccer team has been reduced to the level of comedians.
These were some of the scathing sentiments delivered by Kaizer Chiefs supremo Kaizer Motaung in what amounts to a devastating indictment of Safa and its administrators on the Amakhosi website on Friday.
Motaung called for a ”revolutionary soccer transformation” to be put into operation ”similar to the one when we severed ties with the amateur body that administered soccer in the 1980s”.
”A professional body that is in tune with developments of the game internationally must be put in place to run the national team,” said the Chiefs’ founder and managing director, ”to eliminate the embarrassment in which our players now find themselves”.
Motaung also described some of the proposals tabled at Monday’s emergency meeting of the Safa executive in the wake of the African Nations Cup debacle in Egypt as ”weird and unheard of in my many years in soccer”.
Motaung called for the following far-reaching, even radical changes in the South African soccer structure:
- The Premier League should be reduced from 16 teams to 14 teams who are not threatened by the spectre of relegation and can thereby consolidate and lift their standard to a professional level.
- The PSL should create a committee designed specifically to handle matters pertaining to the national team.
- An independent body of professional referees should be created that will, in turn, be administered by professionals.
- Coaching structures should be realigned to fall in line with those in Europe and South American countries like Brazil.
- The knowledge and experience of former international players should be utilised, but with certain reservations regarding their suitability for the task and knowledge of evolving trends.
Motaung said he intended presenting his proposals at a forthcoming joint meeting of Safa and the PSL.
”The transformation of our soccer is an urgent matter,” he concluded, ”and any procrastination at this critical stage will come to haunt us before and after the 2010 World Cup”.
South Africa have currently slumped to a Fifa world ranking of 50 — the worst in 10 years and in stark contrast to the 16th position achieved briefly following the annexing of the African Nations Cup on home soil in 1996. – Sapa