The future Bafana Bafana coach - African or not, or it does not matter?

Football administrators of Africa, take solace, you are not alone. At the end of the 2014 Fifa World Cup, half of the coaches who took teams there lost their jobs. Some had been with their teams for a long time while others reaped what they never sowed. Noble is the idea that teams look to set up structures leading to the next tournament, Russia 2018.

Look, Germany used the long standing Jurgen Klinsman’s assistant, Joachim Loew as head coach over two Fifa World Cups, seeing his project to fruition. Brazil appointed Dunga as a successor to his predecessor, well almost. Filipe Scolari replaced Mano Menezes whose short stinct followed that of the former captain after the elimination from the 2010 Fifa World Cup. Dunga had replaced Scolari prior to that.

If the Big Phil was not good enough then, what had changed? After that Dunga dismissal for poor performance, what has since changed? Time will tell, but among the 200 milion football crazy population, is there no one with the ability to take them to another level? I thought such impulsive behaviour was patented by Africans.

Given that South Africa will be announcing their own coach at the weekend, one wonders who that lucky guy is. Danny Jordaan speaks the language and I have always admired him and took him as one who walks that talk. SAFA never gave an official list of candidates under considerations and speculation is awash with foreigners.

That can only be security for failure to win the 2018 Russia Fifa World Cup as the championship is ever won by teams with indigenous coaches. In any case, the majority of nations enjoyed better success with home grown coaching stuff.

South Africa’s own records tell the tale, notably the only AFCON victory of 1996 under Clive Barker. Up north, Zimbabwe hired and paid handsome sums to expats, but it took Sunday Marimo in 2004 and Charles Mhlauri in 2006 to take the Warriors to AFCON.

Further north, the same happened with Malawi. TheFlames qualified for AFCON in 1984 under Henry Moyo and with Kinnah Phiri in 2010. Ghana has won the tournament four times, with a local coach guiding the team on all the four occasions.

The most successful football team in the AFCON history is Egypt who won the trophy seven times, mainly with local coaches. Ali Hassan Shehata did so thrice in succession from 2006, 2008 until 2010 when a foreign coach I regarded highly took them to the doldrums. The list of successful stories is endless.

What then makes the non-African coaches attractive given their poor record? They train in the same countries and do the courses that the Africans attend. The course contents are the same and many do not outperform local coaches in these courses anyway.

There is a school of thought that players offer greater respect to foreigners, particularly whites. If true, it means the administrators hiring these coaches subscribe to the same mentality. My observation has been that they are revered by the bosses and whatever these coaches say or need goes. Little attention is given to the requirements of locals. That attitude eats away the respect the players have for the coach.

Players need someone knowledgeable. Their confidence in their coach lies nowhere but in the oozing proficiency of the professional. If the president and secretary of the association take their man lightly, so will the players. As much as the salaries are a confidential issue, the players know. The peanuts that the African coaches get erode any respect the players have for the coach.

One muted idea of having a foreign coach boarded around the respect and fear the African referees have for the whites. If the match officials are that stupid, it could be better to import them from overseas. During a final qualifier between Cameroon and Zimbabwe in Younde, the year 1994, one Reinhard Fabisch got incensed by the obvious biased officiating and tore a $100 bill in-front of the commissioner, earning himself a hefty fine coupled with a suspension.

His white skin could not even earn a draw that Zimbabwe needed to kiss the USA ’94 tournament. The continent has always been encouraged to emancipate itself from mental slavery as none but itself can free its mind. However, the destruction of its football has been its quest for glory and its poverty.  

There is always doubt over the quality of coaches who come to Africa from Europe. They do not make the cut in the leagues that matter, the league where the best of African players ply their trades. It is in these leagues, where the African coaches who believe in their abilities, break the banks and pay for the tuition and flights to acquire the same knowledge, and then come to Africa and remain redundant.

Locally, in Gavin Hunt, Roger De Sa and Pitso Mosemane, Bafana would be well catered for. The South Africa media usually plot the downfall of local coaches, the same way the English destroy their own Three Lions. There are a few more South Africans with the ability to take charge of the team, provided they are armed with the authority to control every detail of the team by the association.

If the continent’s best players can fit in any team in the world, so can the coaches. The world is not ready, and will never be ready to afford an African coach a Manchester United, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich or Juventus job. There shall never be a time in the history of human life when Shakes Mashaba, Riccardo Mannet, Norman Mapeza or Jamhuri Kihwelo will be considered to coach England or Spain. Never.

African associations must bring in extremely qualified and knowledgeable coach educators from abroad to uplift the upcoming coaching and desist from their reliance on the expat coaches. Given that coaches are the most recyclable items on the planet, it may be the joy to pull people down, as results have nothing to do with denying locals opportunities as head national coaches.

South Africa versus Norway: Africa is miles off!

With the 2013 AFCON hosted by South Africa around the corner, comparing African and Europe comes naturally given the last warm-up match between Bafana Bafana and Norway in Cape Town. The Europeans won 1-0 and to many, by luck. The truth is that Africans are miles behind.

Many acclaimed African footballers are endowed with crisp natural abilities that make up for technical and tactical essentials of football that are well-practised in European academies from very tender ages. As seen over the years in South African football since the days of the 'shoe-shine' pianos, these are short-cuts to the real deal. The short-cuts deceive the world and indeed the players themselves.

At international level, young players go through a mill. They are grilled and pass through the furnace and then moulded in pattern shops of academies which give them an edge. It is not as complicated as I am making it but vital enough.

Pass for pass, ball reception for ball reception, the difference between the two types of players can be classic. This is due to the fact that a match can be won by that difference on just that one occasion.

Watching Norway beat South Africa 1-0 in Cape Town, it was amazing how much the hosts failed to make much of their possession and few Bafana players executed these basic skills meaningfully. With 64% possession and a defeat to show for their toil was based on the basic analysis of one or two events in 95 minutes.

To understand what I am talking about, one has to follow closely this explanation. The timing of the pass or the first touch of the ball reception, can be 0.01 of a second early or late, the pass that is a foot long or short, body position that is a degree to the right or left is all that is needed to influence the result. This depends on the level of technical ability of course, time spent practising the technique and skill and good decision making skills.

As one point of the new English football philosophy, decision making is the finer bit that should be encouraged earlier on in players' careers and many Africans lack that big time. Many acclaimed players like Simphiwe Tshabalala, Reneiloe Letsholonyane, Tokello Rantjie and Siyabonga Sangweni can do way better.

They survive and flow through by luck and sometimes by superior natural abilities. The problem with fluke is that their counterparts learn to deal with these when still young. Many 'big' African stars shun their national teams due to lack of details from coaches because the material fed to them is inferior but that is a story for another day.

Most of the attacking behaviour and patterns were not clear cut and the intentions were too disguised even for the South African team's good. The details of implementing the plan were ignored. In attack, the passing and ball control looked like it was spot-on, hence the higher possession rate.

That possession was said to be negative by the Norwegian coach. For me, that was not the deal. The distances and angles of the passes, the weight of the pass and as mentioned earlier, the timing, did not tally and thread through to produce a quality sequence of events to be productive enough. All these facets need to be precise in any single occurrence at least once to win a match.

Defensively, the same is true. The speed of approach to closing the man on the ball, the angles and distances of support to the first defender were appalling. These distances need to be right and especially in the 18-yard box, there can not be a mistake as there is no second chance.

Here, the difference between a foot and a foot and a half is the difference between a 0-0 and a 0-1. Getting first to the ball needs good anticipation. Interceptions can not always be possible in tight spaces where the ball is moved quite quickly and early.

Pressurising the man on the ball and fighting for the second ball to win it become mandatory. In the way the Norwegians scored their goal, a chain of events happened to perfection to their thrill.

There was no one to close down the crosser of the ball. The next attacker had ample time to play the ball square and then the ball was returned centrally. All these attackers received token challenges which would have been bad enough for amateur football.

The final two players touched the ball with minimum spaces and that is all they needed. The South African defence's priority became that of avoiding committing a foul, which they did at the expense of a goal. They did not have to be in that situation to start with.

At the same time, as you will remember, Norway knew they will not have such a chain of events working in their favour anytime soon but they kept looking for the opportunity, in what is daily termed making one's luck.

Back to the point I tried to make, one extra foot, a fraction of a second earlier as well as a degree or two angle could have prevented a Norwegian goal. The same is true in getting the goal the other end although not as easy because that is how Europeans work on the detail. They work in preventing to cancel such small advantages and do it well.

For Africans to come out tops, more had to be aligned, including fortune and referee's decisions. For the things they could have done for themselves, they failed dismally unless you were a fan enjoying football. Since they face fellow Africans in the same predicament, Bafana look to be on par with many nations but they have a few days to put their house in order.

When football comes of age

I have been in Gabon close to 5 months and what a people we have here. And like in many of my sojourns, of interest to me is how different people think of themselves, and of others. Like in Libreville, the vibe filters from the airport through the greenbelt right down to the ghetto.

Gabonese people think their football has come of age, and if you saw their 2-2 draw with Portugal, you will understand why. First of all, the guts and tenacity of the godfathers of football to attract the likes of Real Madrid’s Pepe in a long list of high profile players should be commended.

Gabon pushed their luck, scored first, made Pepe look ordinary, claimed a ‘disallowed goal’, conceded a penalty and actually were on the score-sheet twice on the rainy night.

The small equatorial rain forest country is not resting on their laurels after a successful joint hosting with Equatorial Guinea of the 2012 AFCON which was won by Zambia. They are building on the remnants of that positive vibration and with success.

For those who missed the action, it is not the result that got us talking. It was the all round performance. The team oozed confidence and exhibited sleek silky touches and bravery. The commitment and tactical discipline was very impressive.

Working and doing business with assorted nationals and ethnicities can show you a thing or two. Experiences in the coaching field, even during the days as a coaches instructor, never answered the questions of why certain nations bullied their adversaries to submission, in some cases with shocking ease.

With an all-round performance of the Gabonese, the ball, the pitch, strength, speed and sheer talent were not only responsible for what we saw. The attitude, determination and belief proved that improved self-image was pivotal.

The mentality should never last a few minutes or days. It should be permanent. There is never a doubt of small nation players doing well overseas and failing to deliver at home. More often than not, they are blamed for shying away from crunch situations in fear of injuries, but the truth cannot be any further than that.

This nation started drilling oil over 30 years ago and the benefits are not anything to write home about. If the resources are channeled to filter through the system to benefit the game, soon, given the mentality shown this week, the sky is the limit for the small nation. It must be emphasized that the qualification to the AFCON 2013 by a small nation like Cape Verde may have inspired other budding teams.

Here are some of the opinions and sentiments of the locals in Libreville:

“The game here has improved much after the arrival of Cameroonian coaches and whites from Europe. Corruption was rife and it is still a problem as politicians want to run the show."

"There is hope and as you could see, the players did not care Portugal were. We used to be afraid of whites and players could have been of the ‘team of Luis Figo or Cristiano Ronaldo. Now we can play anybody without fear but our technique and tactics have to improve. We could have scored many goals.”

"We are a small nation but not a small team. We have come a long way and we are ready for the best in Africa."

Is this the death of national team football?

As death of test cricket owing to Twenty-20 version, the last two AFCON versions were dull lull. Some think the last two FIFA World Cups were boring too. 

I would agree much with the Euro 2008. I can only remember the exploits of the co-hosts, Turkey, who even surprised themselves about how much they progressed in the tourney. 
 
Could it be a justifiable end of the Drogba, Etos, Yakubus, Kanutes, Keitas, Toures have been hot elsewhere and average playing for their countries? They could have taken it from Europe, or took it to the World to be just so-so at that bid stage.

With the less anticipated Euro 2012, as spectators, there should be means to sue. Having been taken for a ride for a while now, one wonders how long it will go.

It may the dead end of the game, or just the death of national team football. This comes after it was reported how Italy have been scandalised by bribery and match-fixing scandals in the Serie A.

Their squad to travel, if ever, will be subject of much speculation. Just like in the example of Africa Cup of Nations, it may take away the sparkle of eventual winners, in my opinion at this point, Holland. 

The reigning AFCON champions, Zambia, truly deserved it, and should have won it at any other time in their history. There will never be any doubt about it. The same will be said by the Dutch, should they capture it.

Why the Dutch? They have a point to prove after South Africa 2010. Spain took it under their guard and most probably to them, unduly. Even Barcelona is said to thrive on the Dutch tiki-taka philosophy. They will want that total football to work for them now.

England just hired a mediocre manager and have a squad selected from probably the fewest options in their history. Their lukewarm friendlies are failing to increase the interest anywhere. 

Their league contributes the majority of the participants and that is all. Many of their gifted players withdrew on fears of racial attacks and abuse. There will be general security concerns.

The English Premier League performers in the Euro 2012, will no doubt be cause of interest as others from the rival leagues will be trekking there in the summer. 

The earning powers given that Manchester City, Chelsea contribute a significant number of the highest paid players. 

Barcelona and Real Madrid have a fair share of millionaires. Will they break a leg for their countries or they are fulfilling just another fixture?

Elsewhere, there is Bayern Munich and Borrusia Dortmund of Germany while Paris St German of France contributes as well. These teams pay big money.

There is enough insurance for whatever eventualities and their futures are easily protected by both country and clubs, but it is not the same.

Lionel Messi fails to compare well with players he outclasses with ball manipulation and understanding, but his country contribution has not qualified him to earn the respect of fans, pundits and fellow footballers alike.

The same goes for Didier Drogba and Samuel Eto'o. They needed to lift something for their nations. After that generation of the African golden greats, is there another to follow? I wonder. 

As for now, with less anticipation and interest, we await what may make or break the confederation football, the Euro 2012. Under normal circumstance, new TV sales and satellite decoders and subscription sales would sore at this point. The old versions will do until we see the need for something speciial.