A report this week that South African Football Association (Safa) technical committee chairperson Sturu Pasiya held face-to-face talks with Portugal and former Brazil coach Luiz Felipe Scolari on the issue of Bafana Bafana coach for the 2010 World Cup was on Wednesday described as a ”pie in the sky” by former Moroka Swallows coach and Wits University assistant coach Zeca Marques.
Quipped Marques, an authority on Portuguese soccer: ”If Pasiya came face-to-face with the volatile Scolari at this tense juncture of preparation for next month’s World Cup, he’s probably got a black eye.
”Scolari is intensely involved with plans for his team’s campaign in Germany,” added Marques, ”and he gets very hot under the collar when anyone tries to divert his attention with talk about his future.”
Marques said the consensus in Portugal is that the controversial, head-strong Scolari will continue in his present position ”unless something goes horribly wrong at the World Cup”.
And with the Safa technical committee, which is entrusted with the task of earmarking Bafana’s next coach on a merry-go-round that is going in no particular direction, the first tangible steps to finding an elusive candidate for 2010 are belated meetings with local candidates Gordon Igesund and Jomo Sono.
Cape Town-based Igesund met Safa officials last week and Sono was due to hold similar discussions on Thursday.
Ironically, it is believed that the top brass at Safa is more interested in obtaining a high-profiled overseas coach to take over at the helm of Bafana, but Pasiya’s inexperienced committee has made little tangible progress in this direction.
Brazilian World Cup coach Carlos Alberto Parreira is also on a starry-eyed Safa shortlist.
But Brazilian-born former Highlands Park star and Moroka Swallows coach Jorge Santoro said: ”They might as well add the man in the moon to the list as well. They’ve got more chance of getting him than Parreira.”
Meanwhile, Safa president Molefi Oliphant says he believes the Bafana team that were blown out of the Cosafa Cup by 103rd Fifa-ranked Botswana on Sunday demonstrated that South Africa are on the right track to build a formidable team for the 2010 World Cup.
”In recent games,” he added, ”the players demonstrated little ability on how to retain possession. Against Botswana they were stringing together six and seven passes.”
And all that now seems to remain is for the Bafana players to learn what to do with the ball as they pass with little or no sign of enterprise, inspiration or ingenuity. — Sapa