Senior individuals in local football are trying to sabotage plans to rebuild the national team and the public profile of the South African Football Association (Safa) through an elaborate strategy that would ultimately undermine the work of newly appointed Bafana Bafana coach Carlos Alberto Parreira, and force him out of his job not long after he assumes his duties next February.
The goal of the group — Kaizer Chiefs boss Kaizer Motaung, Cosmos owner and former national coach Jomo Sono and Premier Soccer League chairperson and Orlando Pirates strongman Irvin Khoza — is to force the football governing body to consider their favoured candidate for the head coach job ”by popular public demand”.
In recent weeks, Sono and Motaung — traditional foes who have often traded insults in the media — have jointly called for a soccer indaba open to everyone from football administrators to former players, right down to the man in the street.
What is the indaba’s agenda? Sono says: ”It’s a get-together where people will sit and discuss. We are not saying there is anything right or wrong. Why must we have an agenda? Everyone is invited — and you can come.”
The disharmony has its roots in the desire to centralise football power under a ruling clique.
The chief actors are Safa and its special member, the Premier Soccer League (PSL).
Since the announcement of the formation of a Safa commercial wing — a subcommittee, whose powers, once operational, will include managing national team activities — the two bodies have been battling for control of the new company.
The PSL has tried to have Khoza chair the new body. Since successfully chairing the South African bid to host the 2010 World Cup, Khoza has seen his influence on national football issues steadily eroded.
Khoza and his clique blundered by ousting Safa CEO Danny Jordaan and replacing him with their preferred man, slick attorney Raymond Hack. By pushing Jordaan out of Safa, freeing him to take over the local organising committee (LOC) for the World Cup, they blessed him with more power and public presence than the former MP could ever have envisaged.
Safa will take its cue from the commercial wing, even after 2010. The company will be the only body with power and influence over national football interests in the country.
That obviously diminishes further the role of Safa, and the national association will only be concerned with developmental issues at amateur level. The position of Safa CEO will be reduced to a junior one.
The second and most serious mistake the group made was when Khoza and Motaung publicly refused to serve as members of the commercial wing’s board. At the time they turned down the invitation, they underestimated the influence and power the new structure would have in local football politics.
Now that the doors are firmly closed at both the LOC and the commercial wing, the trio are allegedly focusing their attention on the national coach post. Top sources at Safa say the clique is bent on scuttling any plans that it considers detrimental to its interests.
Sono has categorically denied to the Mail & Guardian that he was ever interested in the national coaching job, saying he only agreed to participate in the intereview process as ”a matter of principle. I was aware that they were trying to set me up against the public so that if I did not attend they would have turned around and said ‘we called him, but he never came’.”
But the group’s scheme involves him directly. Our sources tell us that there is no reason that Motaung would back Sono for the head coach position unless there was something in it for the Kaizer Chiefs boss.
Khoza, Motaung and Sono have always seen to it that their players are well represented in the national team. With Parreira at the helm and all three far from the heart of Safa, the chances are very slim that they will have their way in the selection of players.
Players in the national team have more value internationally because of their public profile.
Motaung this week repeated his displeasure that Parreira was head coach, arguing that he had always believed that the Brazilian would have been better deployed as a technical director. But he denied he would try to oust Parreira: ”It is nonsense — what is it that I am going to gain?”
On the indaba, he said: ”I am merely a facilitator trying to help clean the messy state our football finds itself in. Are you blaming me for trying to rectify something?”