South African Football Association (SAFA) is making some moves in appointing the replacement of Molefi Ntseki as Bafana Bafana coach, as they will be shortlisting three candidates before the end of this week.
Velile Mnyandu reports.
This was confirmed by the SAFA Technical Committee members during a day long media at the SA football mother body’s headquarters in Nasrec today, where they were not only going through the names but also the criteria to be followed before appointing the new coach.
According to SAFA CEO Tebogo Motlanthe, more than 40 coaches have submitted their CV’s, including two favourites, two-time African Cup of Nations (AFCON) winning coach Herve Renard and 2017 AFCON winning coach Hugo Broos, availing themselves for this Bafana job as SAFA looks to appoint a fourth senior men’s national football team coach in a space of seven years.
Ntseki was fired last week following the failure to qualify for the 24-team AFCON in Cameroon next year after finishing behind Ghana and Sudan in Group C.
The SAFA technical committee will be submitting the three names to the organisation’s National Executive Committee (NEC), who are expected to have a meeting on Friday to deliberate on the suitable candidate to take Bafana Bafana forward.
“We are deliberating on the way forward of how the next coach should be appointed. And also looking at ourselves. From this morning’s deliberations we had looked at where we are, where we come from and where we want to go. So we looked at the short to medium to long term objectives. That is obviously Qatar 2022, the next AFCON after that, and then World Cup 2026. We know that the nation is always up in arms over the constant changing of coaches.
“We have outlined that because of the urgency of the matter, we’re going to come up with a shortlist of possibly three names. But before we get there, we’re going to draw a criteria of what kind of coach we are looking towards, in line with the with the objectives of SAFA. And that will determine the kind of coach that we should be looking at,” said technical committee member Sudesh Singh.
Bafana start the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifiers in June and they are in the same group with Ghana again, neighbors Zimbabwe and Ethiopia, and these are all teams who are headed to the AFCON. This means that the new coach will have to hit the ground running. SAFA is looking for a coach who will not only focus on the next qualifiers but also with a long term vision that stretches to next coming AFCONS and 2026 FIFA World Cup.
“Obviously in line with the objectives what we want to do is to appoint a coach who is going to give the World Cup qualifiers that start in June, a full bash. We’re gonna give him all the support we can as SAFA and we hope the nation is going to rally behind him. We’re going to give it a full bash. But we also want to look to the long term and keep the coach and go towards 2026.
“The names of the coaches at the moment are not relevant because we first have to put the objectives in place, we first got to drop the criteria in line with that. As we all know, Bafana is a huge brand. The CEO has mentioned that he has been inundated with CV’s from all over the world, even top coaches in the world want this job. But I think talking about a coach now would be putting the cart before the horse. So I think we need to get the process right,” concluded Singh on this matter.
SAFA has promised to have the new coach confirmed long before the end of this month, so that he could start preparing for the World Cup qualifiers against Zimbabwe and Ghana respectively at the beginning of June.
