I had a chuckle a couple of weeks ago as I read a comment from Premier Soccer League (PSL) CEO Trevor Phillips about his impending retirement after a heart attack, set against the appointment of new Bafana Bafana coach Carlos Alberto Parreira, who is the same age as the ”British Bulldog”.
”Yeah, but he has only been employed in South African football for a couple of months,” the PSL boss said.
What Phillips, the affable gentleman, might have said were he not so polite, is that dealing with the South African Football Association (Safa) requires the patience of a Tibetan monk and the ingenuity of MacGyver.
It is interesting to contrast the two major organisations involved in the running of South African soccer. The PSL, under the expert guidance of Phillips, has become a well-oiled, profitable machine. I have almost daily contact with it in my line of work, and I find it efficient, pleasant and extremely helpful.
Its key appointments have been good ones — Professor Ronnie Schloss as chief operating officer, Ntambi Ravhele as general manager of marketing and communications, and Andrew Dipela as general manager of football, to name just a few.
They all seem to understand their roles and the environment, and have a genuine passion about the future of our game.
Safa, on the other hand, is a shambles of mediocrity, arrogance and indifference, where egos reign and the ”buddy system” that promotes ”jobs for pals” helps to maintain the status quo.
The irony should be lost on no one that the CEO of Safa is a lawyer, Raymond Hack, while the equivalent position at the PSL is currently held by a top sports administrator in Phillips, who was one of the architects of the incredibly successful English Premiership back in the early 1990s.
Tasked with taking our soccer forward after readmission to the international stage, Safa has been a spectacular failure. Constant bickering among staff and with players, financial mismanagement, poor decision-making on a grand scale, and a distinct lack of vision are all allegations that hold water when levelled at the organisation.
The honest truth is, were Safa a legitimate corporate structure where employees were held accountable for their actions, many within the ”company” would not be fit to make the tea.
I will share with you one example that may seem a simple enough mistake, but is symptomatic of how our soccer is viewed around the world.
Some time after Benni McCarthy left Ajax Amsterdam for Celta Vigo in Spain in 1999, he was called up to the national squad. Then Bafana team manager Screamer Tshabalala, who is still in the employ of Safa despite many such instances, sent his call-up via fax to the Ajax offices, headed; ”Dear Mr Celta Vigo …”
When the Ajax staff stopped laughing and picked themselves up off the floor, what kind of impression do you think they had of the efficiency of South African football? I bet they still laugh about it over at the water cooler.
But less comical aberrations include the hiring and firing of top — in some cases, world-class — coaches, the disintegration of the Bafana brand and the failure to set up a reserve or youth league in this country, something that shocked new Bafana coach Carlos Alberto Parreira so much, he called it ”the saddest thing I have ever seen”.
It came as no surprise, then, when I read this week of the debacle surrounding the Nelson Mandela Challenge match against Egypt to be held in England. I have no problem with the game being hosted in London. It makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways, but once again the processes around the arrangements for the game have been nothing short of amateur.
Ignoring many qualified and proven promotions companies who could have been hired to stage the event, Safa instead employs a company known as Star Meridian Sports, whose only apparent ”achievement” is the failure to organise a match between Ghana and Nigeria in August after the Super Eagles pulled out. Its operation is run out of what was described this week as a ”back office in Finchley”. Excuse my pessimism, but it hardly sounds cutting-edge.
The game might well go ahead despite reported squabbles over money — we shall learn soon enough — but it is already yet another public-relations disaster for Safa, which took the incredible, Stalinist decision this week to place a ”ban” on anybody speaking about the game!
Still, true to form, nobody will be held accountable; the blame will be shifted on to the organisers, not the people who hired the organisers; and we will trudge along to the next PR disaster.
Until the organisation is ”infiltrated” by people with sound business sense and an understanding of global standards in sports administration, we will continue to be the laughing stock, and the embarrassment, of world soccer.
Nick Said is editor of special projects at Kick-Off magazine