The national Under-20 side had lost to Lesotho twice in one year – in the Africa Youth Championships qualifier and in the Cosafa Cup in Botswana.

Zondo, once a renowned local coach, earmarked for great coaching positions, had his reputation tainted as an Under-20 coach.

That failure to win against Lesotho reduced him to the status of an incapable coach who had no ideas despite his previous success  with  Golden Arrows and Bloemfontein Celtic during his stints there.
Given the negative nature of how his tenure as the national team coach ended, you would assume Zondo would be  hungry to restore his name.

“No,” said Zondo who is now the coach of the Transnet Sport School of Excellence. “Some of us are not coaches for the limelight.

“Coaching the youth is my passion and it has always been.”

But given his career, being head coach of the school known for producing players such as Steven Pienaar and Dillon Sheppard, this move looks like a regressive one.

Having worked as assistant to former Bafana coach Carlos Alberto Parreira and to Jomo Sono at the 2002 World Cup, this looked like a ticket to good standing in the local game.

“I am doing something which I always loved which is development,” he said. “This is where football starts and ends according to me.

“As a country we just need to look at it with great concern, as it is our main weakness.”

This is something which caught up with his Under-20 side two years ago when they lost to Lesotho.

“The boys lacked international experience. But the losses were not through my faults as a coach. I was working with players who failed as Under-17s. When I started with them they had not played a single international game in a long time.

“This was always going to make it hard for them to win anything.” 

Zondo added that it  Safa  also conceded that he was not part of the team’s pathetic displays.

“The guys sat down with me and said we need to save the country’s face  because they saw that my failure was something which was inevitable given the fact that the team that was used had already failed before,” he said.

On why the school has not been able to produce players of Pienaar’s calibre, Zondo said developing players is a process but vowed that the latent talent available in the country will be seen soon from there.

“It will take time.

 But we do have talent that needs to be correctly nurtured and our country will grow once more,” he said.

Asked if he had ruled out a move back to the PSL, Zondo said anything was possible.

“You  never know,” he said.