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Quo Vadis, Bafana Bafana?

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Coach Molefi Ntseki could hand Thulani Serero a spot when Bafana Bafana face Mali this afternoon in Port Elizabeth. Picture: Lefty Shivambu/Gallo Images
Coach Molefi Ntseki could hand Thulani Serero a spot when Bafana Bafana face Mali this afternoon in Port Elizabeth. Picture: Lefty Shivambu/Gallo Images

Bafana Bafana is your quintessential story of footballing regression.

From the dizzy heights of winning the Africa Cup of Nations tournament as rookies in 1996, our footballing fortunes have been as unreliable and unpredictable as the National Lottery.

This in a country that boasts world-class facilities and is awash with football talent.

These thoughts came to me while watching the Rugby World Cup in Japan and concurrently hearing that Bafana will be facing Mali in this year’s version of the Nelson Mandela Challenge, which is scheduled to take place today in Port Elizabeth.

This is an annual soccer spectacle that Safa uses to keep the memory of the late icon alive.

The tournament will be the first test for our newly and, may I add, hastily appointed national coach, Molefi Ntseki.

I must say that I am still flabbergasted that Safa appointed someone who had never even played for our national team.

His only credit in his thin CV that I found online is that he coached our Under-17 side, whom he steered to the runners-up spot at the 2015 African Under-17 Championship in Niger, and also led them at the Under-17 Fifa World Cup in Chile in the same year.

No offence to Ntseki, but that is not enough and I have a sneaky feeling that he is being handed a poisoned chalice by Safa.

This is the coach who sits at the top of Safa’s structures and its backbenchers – the national executive at Safa – unanimously preferred him over the younger Benny McCarthy, a Uefa Champions League winner, a former lethal Bafana striker and someone who has a sterling career in the premier European football leagues.

McCarthy came back home and took over coaching a top PSL outfit in Cape Town City, where he has already proved his mettle as an exciting coach.

If there is a candidate that is suited for the Bafana coaching position after the hasty departure of the cantankerous Stuart Baxter, it is McCarthy, but I digress.

I don’t believe that Safa itself believes Ntseki will do a good job. I suspect that it is just buying time, probably to put its house in financial order before it gets serious.

From the day Ntseki commences his coaching job, it would concurrently urge its PR division to compile a media release lamenting how the wool was pulled over its eyes for it not to have seen the real truth of his background, and that it was unlikely that the man would survive on the biggest of international football stages.

It would subsequently use that excuse to justify another foray into Europe to scout for yet another no-name brand coach in favour of our own.

Let me also issue a disclaimer: I have always been the one in favour of South African coaches, black or white, taking charge of our national side, and for the same reasons that Safa appointed Ntseki.

This is simply due to my belief that European coaches come with a big price tag and a patronising attitude that looks down on flair.

Let me add that, on paper, I don’t actually doubt the football coaching acumen of Ntseki, except to say that the first time I’d heard his name was when he was announced as the new Bafana coach, and I regard myself as a keen follower of the beautiful game, locally and abroad.

Nevertheless, I still don’t doubt that he probably has a good football brain between his ears. But that won’t be enough at international level where Bafana plies its trade.

It may have worked with the Under-17s, who are yet to be exposed to the higher stages of the sport and thus know no better and have no basis for comparison.

At Bafana’s level, it will be a different ballgame, pardon the pun. There, it is more important to motivate than merely coach, as such players arrive already exposed to higher coaching standards from respective clubs and I doubt if Ntseki has that capacity.

That is why, when looking at trends worldwide, national coaches normally come from the crop of the top countries’ former players in their national squads or are established coaches of high professional standing.

At that level, reputation is even more important than actual technical know-how.

This is simply due to the fact that professional football players already exposed to the best coaching in respective clubs easily develop into spoilt divas who find it hard to listen or even receive instructions from a coach whose background they hold in perpetual contempt.

In brief, coach Ntseki might generally know a lot about football, but he will inadvertently suffer what is commonly known as source credibility.

If the source is not credible, the impact and veracity of the message is greatly weakened.

It’s like an actor who made it in a Hollywood blockbuster under an award-winning director suddenly finding him or herself in a village production directed by a primary school teacher.

So let me conclude by saying that, unlike most local soccer scribes and commentators, whom I suspect are already busy measuring the hanging rope, I am not going to wait until after the Mandela Challenge (when Mali have thrashed Bafana) to look for the nearest tree.

I am saying it in advance that, this time, Safa has really outdone itself and it’s a pity that a helpless man has been thrown into the deep end with prior knowledge that he can’t even swim.

Maisela is an author and management consultant

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