Minister of Sport and Recreation Makhenkesi Stofile says he does not believe the South African Football Association (Safa) can produce a side ready to compete well in the 2010 World Cup.
”I am not convinced that Safa can deliver a squad for 2010,” he told the Mail & Guardian in an interview this week. Bafana Bafana are currently ranked 53rd by world governing body Fifa, the national team’s lowest ranking since readmission to international football in 1992.
Stofile confirmed that the government is willing to help with the financing of a salary package for the next Bafana Bafana coach. ”We can help them, as a matter of fact.”
He also bemoaned what he referred to as the absence of ”investment in player development” in South African regional structures.
His statements might force Safa to realise the urgency of reconstructing the national team. More importantly, they raise hopes that the government is keenly following and assessing the situation the national team finds itself in.
Stofile argued that in the absence of a law giving the sports minister muscle to intervene when sports bodies fail their constituencies, his office will always be reduced to that of a hapless observer.
The Sport Amendment Bill is being referred to Parliament for comment and, if passed, it will take away the independent powers that make sports bodies a law unto themselves.
At present, Stofile said, ”the work of a sports minister is that of a catalyst; help them do this and that. It is to persuade them, not compel.”
However, he poured scorn on suggestions that the silence from his department about the problems at Safa meant that the government was not chastising the association for its recurring problems and dereliction of its national duty.
He said his department started seriously engaging with the association in June last year, when Bafana Bafana failed to qualify for the World Cup, which starts in Germany next week.
”I have been talking to Safa since we lost to Ghana. We are not talking politics but football; how best to organise the association.
”[Safa] is not a parastatal. I cannot tell them what to do. I can only share my thoughts with them. I tell them that without systems on the ground we are going nowhere. If you don’t have the base you cannot have the fillings.”
Stofile was aghast that Safa had not delivered on an agreement reached last year that there needed to be a process to identify and work with 40 players to start preparing them for 2010.
”This is what I have been saying to Safa: no matter how many coaches they bring, or how much they pay them, they are not going to come and deliver when there is no material on the ground the coach would want to work with. You don’t expect the coach to be a talent scout as well. The coach expects that those things are already in place.”
Stofile’s view is backed by Ted Dumitru, former coach of Bafana Bafana who is now a member of the technical committee tasked with finding the next coach. If there is no pool of identified talent, ”when the next coach comes where does he start?
”He won’t agree with all the players we have selected; at the same time we can’t be wrong with all of them. Maybe at most he will differ with us on three or four. The important thing is that he will have a base,” said Dumitru.
The former coach also said that the absence of the group of players meant that South Africa missed out on the opportunity to play friendlies against teams participating in the World Cup.
In three months South Africa hosts Congo in a qualifier for the 2008 African Nations Cup to be held in Ghana.
In the meantime, infighting has emerged in the process of the appointment of the next coach with influential individuals starting to lobby for their chosen candidates.
This is despite the fact that Brazil’s Carlos Alberto Parreira has formally been approached and, according to Safa insiders, ”everybody wants him”.
Technical committee members fear that, for reasons unknown, a few on the Safa executive committee want to hijack and scupper the process they describe as having being, ”time-consuming and difficult”.
There are calls now for a local coach to be appointed despite money being spent on travelling to talk to the overseas-based coaches who have been targets from the beginning.
Dumitru says: ”They are trying to politicise the issue and undermine the technical committee.”