Tuesday, February 18, 2025
HomeLocalJunior - Our Standard Of Football Is Very Low

Junior – Our Standard Of Football Is Very Low

Junior Khanye says the current standard of football in South Africa is low, and it is affecting the way our national teams perform.

The former Kaizer Chiefs winger was speaking in his column last week in the iDiski Times newspaper.

Khanye says too much politics and interference, and not enough cohesion amongst club development systems is the problem.

The standard of football in South Africa is very low,” Khanye said in last week’s iDiski Times. 

“I think SAFA has wrapped itself up in too much politics and it has forgotten its primary mandate to promote the sport.”

“Our football is extremely poor and I think one of the reasons is that there are too many development leagues across the country; you have ABC Motsepe League, SAB League, Diski Challenge, GladAfrica Championship, amongst others. The problem with having too many different development leagues is that it kills the hunger that players have for the sport, sometimes you have 30 year old players playing in these development leagues, which then deprives young kids the opportunity of playing.”

“Another problem which contributes to this low quality of football is that all 16 DStv premiership clubs are not working with the same approach when it comes to developing players. Some clubs have German coaches, others have coaches from across the African continent and they are all coaching different styles and tactics. We need to have development structures which emphasise the South African way of doing things. All in all, our standard of football is poor, the players are not good enough and that’s why our national team is struggling.”

Khanye also laments the role agents play in the game.

The way we should solve this problem is to hire a very strong national team coach who will oversee everything from national team under 17 to the senior side.”

“That coach needs to have a meeting with all DStv premiership chairmen and inform them that he will not pick any player who is being trained under a different philosophy or style. This will force clubs to find a single philosophy which will match the national team’s style. We also need to get rid of too many agents and too many development structures.”

You can read more of what Khanye had to say in Edition 8 of iDiski Times

TRENDING

RELATED ARTICLES