The government, sponsors and the World Cup local organising committee (LOC) are willing to pay the salary of a top foreign coach to ensure South Africa does well when it hosts the 2010 showpiece.
A senior official at the South African Football Association (Safa), who did not want to be named, said the LOC and the government wanted to have a big say in the rebuilding of Bafana Bafana to ensure that the 2010 World Cup is a success.
Although he would not give more details of the plan, he said the matter had been discussed by the Safa hierarchy in recent meetings. It remains unclear whether this initiative came from Safa or outside roleplayers.
In a recent interview with BBC Sport, LOC chief executive Danny Jordaan, responding to a question on whether Safa could afford to hire a top international coach such as Sven-Goran Eriksson, whose annual earnings are about £4-million (about R42-million), said: ”The question is can we afford not to afford the best possible coach?… I don’t think the size of a salary is a consideration.”
The question is whether Jordaan was privy to information that Safa president Molefi Oliphant was still in the dark about. The day after the BBC interview, Oliphant poured scorn on Jordaan’s comments, saying they were his private views.
On Friday, the joint liaison committee, chaired by Oliphant and including representatives from both Safa and the Premier Soccer League (PSL) will ratify some of the proposals in a report of a sub-committee headed by Safa vice-president Mwelo Nonkonyana.
Safa insiders say one of the suggestions in that report is the establishment of a ”company that is wholly owned by Safa in line with the Safa constitution”, to be in charge of the affairs of the country’s national teams.
Early last month the Mail & Guardian reported that the national association was looking into proposals urging a dramatic restructuring of the game, which include the establishment of a newly constituted governing body with equal representation from the PSL and Safa.
Although Nonkonyana would not shed more light on the content of his report, he mentioned that Friday’s meeting would be about looking at ”questions and strategies to have a proper structure to run Bafana Bafana and ensure that we come up with a turn-around plan for the national team”.
Sturu Pasiya, head of Safa’s technical committee, which appoints the coach, would not comment beyond saying: ”I believe the association will be able to organise and cater for any coach’s demands.”
Pasiya confirmed that his committee has short-listed 12 people for the plum Bafana Bafana job. But insiders say there are only about six in the running, the others are standbys in case of ”rejection from the main guys”.
Although there are South Africans on the shortlist, there is growing belief — spurred by the news that other bodies are willing to make a financial contribution to the coach’s remuneration — that the next man to lead the national team will be an outsider.
Current Brazilian coach Carlos Parreira heads the list of favourites for the job. Parreira won the World Cup in 1994, when Brazil beat Italy in a penalty shootout.
The M&G has been reliably told that a South African will only be considered if the top foreign coaches refuse the offer.
”When their demands cannot be matched, then we will be forced to go for a local man. But Safa has no options now, they have to deliver. The task is too important,” said a senior Safa official.
The shortlist contains five locals, two from Africa, and the rest from abroad.
Stephen Keshi, a former Nigerian international, is one of the two names from the continent. He helped Togo to qualify for the World Cup for the first time in the country’s history, but he will not take the team to Germany later this year. He was fired in February, after the country’s dismal performance in the Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt.
Multiple PSL title-winning coach Gordon Igesund, now with Cape Town-based Ajax, and Pitso Mosimane, who was Ted Dumitru’s assistant at Afcon, head the domestic list.