People Speak: Ignorance is now a virtue in South African Football

They ask: “How it is possible that Solly Luvhengo who repeatedly failed with U17 be promoted to the U20?”

Mathews Mpete, Sunday Sun reporter, in his recent column reiterates one of the most detestable and harmful aspect in SA football; the irresponsible attitude of football officials! He is wondering why the sport minister, Fikile Mbalula is ignoring this serious problem and, with such continuous disregard towards unresolved critical issues.

Countless useful and some brilliant reports, analyses, research findings, complains and so on have, for years, been published or sent directly to football authorities in attempts to solve serious problems in local football and yet nothing positive happened. Our young experience at Maximalfootball.com would attest to that. Here we are not talking about personal opinions or minor hiccups. We are referring to shocking abnormalities some of which are unique in the world of football.

When Minister Fikile Mbalula recently told the media, “I’m happy issues have been settled and we are going forward” referring the U23 club-versus-country saga, he chose to ignore the fact that the antagonism between the PSL and SAFA is still the most destructive predicament in SA football and the “things panned out” between the two football entities is illusory. Evidence to that was Supersport United head coach, Gavin Hunt’s subsequent statement: “I will never release my U23 players again!”

How do we accept a situation where private interests of club owners continue to impact negatively on the nations’ international representation and image?  It is unthinkable! Even more so as every example of successful national football set-up one would consider indicates the same thing; the clubs are strictly regulated through a licensing system that unarguably puts the national interest first! The only reason why such regulatory measures of national interest are not existent in this country is because the power and influence of the PSL leaders (club owners) forces everybody to conveniently ignore it.

The football media and pundits have repeatedly underlined the importance of accountability for the performance of national coaches and have also insisted for close cooperation between national team coach, Pitso Mosimane and the youth national coaches. That’s with the view of improving performance through developing and promoting national team players who share the same mentality from their junior stages up to Bafana Bafana. There is no sign of this happening, still. The U23 in Morocco played differently to Bafana Bafana and so does the U20 and U17. If the Technical Director, Serame Letsoaka is responsible for ensuring that such a vital policy is implemented then we are witnessing another failure.

We recorded countless complains about the policy (or the secrecy of it) of appointing youth national coaches. Who is interviewing the candidates and decides on such important appointments? According to a previous statement made by the chairman of SAFA’s Technical Committee, Fanyana Sibanyoni those positions were supposed to be advertised. That was, however, not the case. Justifiably, prominent youth coaches are questioning why those who have successfully demonstrated their competence in developing young players and apply for youth national teams’ jobs are systematically denied the opportunity.

They ask: “How it is possible that Solly Luvhengo who repeatedly failed with U17 be promoted to the U20?” When recently asked by a youth coach about the criteria of selection for the U20, Solly could not give the answer!  The opinion of many youth coaches is that Solly Luvhengo’s close relations with Serame Letsoaka’ makes him “untouchable”.

But, sadly, that is not the end of all mismanagements taking place at SAFA. MaximalFootball.com has been doing some serious digging into such discrepancies within SAFA. We will follow up with more information on what we have managed to unearth speaking to our reliable sources in the associations.

By Editor of Maximal Football

Original story: http://goo.gl/rzAOM