Where to now after Perreria? | InTheNews.co.za

Apr

Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 10:51 AM by Newser

Does Bafana Bafana seem to be jinxed? Nothing seems to ever go right for the South Africa National soccer team. It is no secret that the team has not been performing well over the last couple of years. Many players and coaches have come but the team has failed to deliver the goods on an international scale as compared to their fellow countrymen on the rugby field, cricket pitch, swimming pool and golf course. With South Africa having won the right to host the Soccer World Cup in 2010 it was only right for the country to go all out and try deliver a winning team for the tournament. The first task was to appoint a word class coach to help the team, up step the Brazilian Carlos Alberta Perreria. After a long time of negotiating to secure the services of the coach and after offering a multi million Rand salary, SAFA got their man and everyone was excited.

South Africa would now be coached by a Brazilian who has won the world cup before. Very few have a better CV than Perreria and it was exciting times ahead. But how we were wrong. Even if you have a great coach like Perreria, he needs good players to be able to carry out his instructions on the field and this is where South Africa were struggling. Perreria was not a magician who could turn below average players into world cup winners over night. South Africa’s soccer players are not world class and it would have taken a miracle for them to play the exact type of football Perreria would have demanded from them. Perreria took Bafana Bafana to the Africa Cup of Nations earlier this year and the team failed to progress past the group stages. South Africa were clearly not delivering the much needed success on the field that we had hoped for even with Perreria as the coach. Perreria surely had a hard task ahead of him to try get a team ready for the 2010 World Cup. Perreria did say we should not expect much from his team now as he was building a team for 2010, now all that building seems to have ‘crumbled’ as the Brazilian has resigned from his post as coach of the national soccer team so that he can go back to Brazil to be with his ill wife.

There was really no option here for Perreria, he has done the right thing for himself and I am sure many of us would have done the same thing. Now the question remains, where to now for Bafana? Is all that work Perreria put in going to be undone? Maybe not by the sound of things. It looks like another Brazilian coach is going to take over Bafana Bafana. I heard his name mentioned but I had no idea who he was. He is certainly not your world class coach and for me that is going a step backwards for Bafana. They had done the right thing by hiring a world class coach but now he has left so why not go out and get another world class coach rather than an unknown Brazilian coach! SAFA surely have the money and resources to hire a world class coach after spending millions on paying Perreria.

What will be interesting to see is if the new coach will continue using Perreria’s plan for 2010? Will the new coach stick to the same players Perreria had identified as the potential stars for 2010? Time is running out for Bafana as 2010 is just around the corner and we still don’t have a team we can be confident will not let us down in 2010. Carlos Perreria was starting to get it right but now he has gone and we have to start again. One step forward, two steps backwards for Bafana.