Factors /Reasons(A) Environmental factors - Lack of proper development structures in South Africa leads to poor preparation and non readiness of players in a mid to long run term, in terms of strength, technical readiness, tactical awareness, couple with that is easy access (easy entrance) for any player in S.A to play in PSL, irrespective of thorough preparation.
Poor coaches in development structures recommend unprepared players to the professional teams and a player becomes successful in his first season and suddenly a player is exported to Europe where reality takes over as the player fails or become stagnant in those weaker leagues, exemplary players include , Stanton Lewis , Kermit Erasmus, Gareth Ncaca, Ninja Mofokeng and so forth, obviously there are some exceptions in the case of bo-Benni McCarthy, Quinton Fortune who got the good grounding and feeding.
The training methods and technical preparation overseas differ vastly with local ones , to the extent that a player fails to adjust. Their methods are more rigorous and on and off the field factors are considered, whereas local players are not used to be treated holistically, simply speaking, the way of doing things overseas is more advance and step ahead of our methods of doing things, hence the PSL does not produce a complete player ready for the top European leagues, unless a player (very exceptional) goes an extra mile, put a lot of effort and possess right attitude like bo-Lucas Radebe, Shaun Bartlett, Mark Fish.
Weather conditions also plays a role in many local players not adjusting to top European leagues, however, that plays a very minimal role cause a player has to eventually get used to those uncomfortable climatic conditions.
Basically, South Africa is not a conducive environment to produce world class players, unless an individual has the right attitude, willingness and strong desire to make it overseas, like bo-Radebe, Fish, Fortune, Bartlett, Masinga and so forth.
The different eras produce different pool of players, hence, as soon as we were re-admitted by CAF and FIFA to global football, all went well due to that hype and enthusiasm and that rubbed off to plenty of local players, to the extent that we won the AFCON and Pirates won the Champions League and with the confidence level of all those players high.
The demand for them in the global arena became high, their hunger and commitment level was still high, therefore the global football fraternity saw a new market, hence the export level to top European Leagues increased, some of the players who were able to secure those overseas moves include Eric Tinkler, Mark Fish, Phil Masinga, Lucas Radebe, David Nyathi and so forth.
However as time went on, that is moving to a new era, the hype of re-admission slowly died down, resulting in the national squad’s performance diminishing and the performance of local teams in regional tournaments (Africa champion’s league) diminishing as well, that in effect affected our pool of talented and skilful players decreasing, because the hunger and excitement went down, the skills shortage factor started to creep in thereby resulting in the demand for local players overseas declining, with only the minority cutting it, the likes of Benni McCarthy, Steven Pienaar, Bradley Carnell, Aaron Mokoena, Nasief Morris to mention but a few.
It should be mentioned that, there’s a direct relationship between the performance of the national squad and the global demand for its players, especially in the top European leagues, that is as well coupled with the performance of local teams in regional tournaments, with the exception of Egypt, of course.
Typical examples will include Enyimba team which won back to back Africa Champions League in 2004 and 2005, resulting in most of their players going to France and some European leagues, the likes of Odimingwe, Danny Shittu and so forth. Senegal team which beat France in the first round of the World cup in Korea suddenly produced almost their entire squad to top European leagues (Papa Dioup, El Hadji Diouf, Ndaye and so forth).
There’s a football skills shortage in the eyes of the top European teams for South African players due to below par performance of Bafana Bafana. Trust in our local players is lost in the top European leagues; hence the rate of exporting our players there is very low, slow or non-existent, currently.
by Sthembiso…
"The Return of the General"
