Coach Carlos Alberto Parreira will have gained a better idea of what lies in store for him with Bafana Bafana after holding his first training camp with the national team last week.
Despite his work-permit problems, which are sadly typical of the laughable South African Football Association (Safa) administration that has been forced on us (what has Safa been doing in the six months since he accepted the job?), Parreira spent a fruitful four days with the majority of players who will form the backbone of his squad to challenge for a place at the African Nations Cup finals in Ghana next year.
The Brazilian singled out ball possession and finishing as his two major areas of concern — the latter almost certainly indicative of his desire to bring Benni McCarthy back into the national fold.
It is no secret that we struggle to produce natural goal scorers in this country, and following the retirement of the dependable Shaun Bartlett and self-imposed exile of McCarthy, the situation has deteoriated further. It is all the more reason why Parreira will be relying on goals from midfield from the likes of Delron Buckley, Benedict Vilakazi and Steven Pienaar.
Just the coach’s presence at training seems to have given the players a lift. His experience and reputation around the world as being at the very top of his profession appears to have sharpened the focus of players who are keen to learn as much as they can from the veteran of five World Cups.
This was echoed in the media by such players as Aaron Mokeona and Nasief Morris, who both praised the coach’s laid-back style.
South African players traditionally do not respond well to an authoritarian figure barking orders from the sidelines. One only has to look back at the Philippe Troussier debacle around the 1998 World Cup to find an example of that.
Those who have successfully led Bafana since 1992 — Clive Barker, Jomo Sono and Carlos Queiroz — all had great powers of motivation, and were able to get the best out of the players by treating them as adults and building a ”family” atmosphere around the squad.
This may seem a trivial point in a professional sporting outfit, but history tells us that, in whatever sporting code, a happy team environment breeds success, while an unhappy one is far more likely to fail. An example of this would be the off-field haggling over money and back-stabbing from Safa that demoralised the squad at the 2006 African Nations Cup in Egypt and, in my opinion, was a major contributing factor to us losing all three matches without scoring a goal.
By his own admission, the players that assembled for this camp were not the selection of Parreira — he left that up to his two local deputies, Pitso Mosimane and Khabo Zondo. But the head coach has promised his ”own” squad for the African Nations Cup qualifier in Chad in late March, meaning it will be a busy month or so of traversing the country, and possibly Europe, to try to find the right combinations for success.
It will be clear from the selection for that match just who has made an impression on the 63-year-old coach and, perhaps more importantly, who has not.