THE chopping and changing of coaches, the lack of stability and a clear vision, will always set African teams back in international football.
This is the view held by many on the continent, a sentiment echoed by lots of coaches as well as ex-professionals, including Lothar Matthaus.
Speaking to StarTimes in Hoffenheim yesterday, the former Germany international and 1990 World Cup winner praised the efforts of the African teams, particularly Nigeria, Senegal and Morocco at the last World Cup.
But he also lamented the fact that the from the CAF confederation invariably fail to go further than the quarter-finals in the global showpiece.
“If you change the coach each six months... each year, the team cannot have stability,” said Matthaus.
“One year you play offensive, one year defensive. One year you play the young players, the next you play the experienced ones.
“I think the federations in Africa have to believe in the coach when he signs the contract. They have to work with him, and not only when the results are good. And not fire the coach when the result is bad.
“For me that’s too ‘much up and down’. You need to have more stability in your system and work longer with the same coach... like Germany did in the last 12 years.
“For this, we also had a bad result in the World Cup. But we believe the coach (Joachim Low) will correct the mistakes and get good results again.”
As defending champions, Germany crashed out early in the 2018 World Cup finals, embarrassingly failing to emerge from the group stages.
Yet the German federation have backed Low, on his proven credentials, to continue as head coach in the next four years.
South Africa, on the other hand, have had five coaches in the last 12 years, the latest being Stuart Baxter, who is not even guaranteed to be in the job longer than a year, following the poor results in the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers.
Nigeria are also known to drop coaches as the blink of an eye, having had five in about 10 years.
Ghana are no better also, with Kwesi Appiah being the fifth Black Stars coach in eight years.
Of course, there are many factors and varying challenges to each federation.
But at this “chopping and changing” rate, it may not be soon before an African team lifts a major trophy, despite the abundance of talent.
As many as 23 African players ply their trade in the competitive German Bundesliga, which is among the top leagues in Europe.
