Soccer fields awash with colouredsFeb 22, 2010 10:28 PM By BBK
BBK: I do not know the smell of rotten salmon. Correction. I did not know the smell of rotten Salmon until Sunday.
I have a strong suspicion I got a whiff of what it could be like from something spoken by, well, a Salmon.
It seems Glen Salmon subscribes to the "ignorance is bliss" school of thought. Either that or the Supersport United striker needs, desperately and urgently, to have his head examined.
There is no other way to explain his assertion to my colleague Carlos Amato that coloured players are getting a raw deal in Bafana.
"The players who have done the best internationally are coloured, but there aren't enough of them in the Bafana team," Salmon said in a Sunday Times interview.
If I didn't know Amato better, I would have assumed he plied his interviewee with gallons of alcohol for Salmon to have spoken such hogwash.
Let us take a glance at the current Bafana Bafana team to reconnect Salmon with reality: Emile Baron (Salmon's team-mate), Bryce Moon, Moeneeb Josephs, Bernard Parker, Daine Klate (Salmon's team-mate), Steven Pienaar, Lance Davids, Elrio van Heerden, Morgan Gould (Salmon's team-mate) and Gert Schalkwyk.
Weren't these athletes coloured the last time you checked? Did I forget Bevan Fransman?
Nassief Morris was a Bafana player until he (mis)behaved his way out of the team.
Shucks, even Benni McCarthy, the only South African to win the coveted Champions League, is coloured.
And Carlos Alberto Parreira will move mountains to get Benni leaner and move him from the cafeteria so he can be meaner in the penalty area and bliksem the bull's eye for Bafana during the World Cup. Is that an example of a coloured player getting a raw deal?
Now for a quick blast from the past: former Bafana players Mark Williams, Andre Arendse, Brendan Augustine, Bradley August, Frank Schoeman, Shaun Bartlett, Stanton Fredericks, Fabian McCarthy.
Future Bafana stars Kermit Erasmus, Dylan Claasen.
All coloureds.
It is one thing to be bitter about not being selected for Bafana, but being selective with the truth, when it is staring you straight in the face is plain silly.
The one thing I will give coloured players hands down: die laaities het krag. When they dream, they dream big. Not only that, they are prepared to give blood, sweat and tears to live their dream.
Pienaar is talented. But he is not satisfied with that talent. He has made hard work a constant companion of his talent from Ajax Cape Town to Ajax Amsterdam, to Borussia Dortmund and now Everton.
It is not by mistake that he is attracting the attention of Bundesliga giants Bayern Munich, who see him as a perfect fit to plug the gap that will be opened by the departure of Franck Ribery, if Real Madrid succeed in snatching the Frenchman to the Santiago Bernabeu.
While the coloured crowd prosper, the black boys prioritise wine, women and song. They spiral out of control and their careers veer off the rails.
Before you know it, they are called former footballers when they are in their mid-20s, which is when they are supposed to be in their prime.
Only someone smoking smoked salmon would believe the lie that coloured players are getting a raw deal.
I smell something fishy and it smells like rotten Salmon.
source: http://www.timeslive.co.za/opinion/columnists/article321371.ece
