Same old story for clueless Safa

Stuart Baxter resigned from the post of Bafana head coach on Friday morning, his second time quitting the job, after also he also walked out in 2005. And so on Saturday morning Safa’s technical committee will meet to discuss who they want as the 27^th coaching change in the senior national team since readmission into international football in 1992.

This includes caretaker coaches and repeat coaches, but it is still an absolutely ludicrous statistic, and an indictment of a poorly run footballing body. There is quite simply no accountability at the top of South African football, with the coach providing an all-too-easy scapegoat.

Just witness Safa president Danny Jordaan’s insulting rant about Bafana after their 2019 Africa Cup of Nations opener against the Ivory Coast. Never mind that Bafana had struggled against the Elephants, it is not an association president’s position to be belittling his team and their head coach like this, especially one game into a tournament.

Baxter was political in announcing his departure on Friday, but there were clearly issues between him and Safa, if not quite as radical as in 2005. Baxter’s team produced some fantastic results, beating Nigeria in Nigeria, and most famously, knocking the hosts Egypt out of Afcon 2019. They also had their failures, not making it to Russia 2018, and a group stage campaign in Egypt that was unbelievably dull.

Yet Baxter got Bafana to the quarterfinals of the Afcon, their best performance away from home at an Afcon since 2002. He gave a defensive structure to the Bafana team, that if at times made them dull to watch, also made them difficult to beat.

It was, as midfielder Dean Furman said this week, “unrealistic” to expect Bafana to win the Afcon. After all, Bafana simply don’t have the quality of player that the likes of Algeria, Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco or the Ivory Coast do.

How many Bafana players are playing in the English Premier League, La Liga, the Bundesliga or Serie A? Much like Baxter’s apparent severance cheque, a massive zero.

The Bafana coach also appeared to have built a squad of players that trusted him, that were willing to put their bodies on the line for their country, as shown in that performance against the Pharaohs. That has not always been the case with Bafana, and I really feel it is regrettable that Baxter has felt he needs to step down.

If the problem was with Safa, it would have been far better if those at Safa had stepped down. But we all know that that is never likely to happen.

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