THE SA Football Association (Safa) was called by Parliamentary Portfolio Committee for Sports, Arts and Culture to justify their appointment of Hugo Broos as Bafana Bafana head coach, instead of a local.
The Safa executives, led by president Danny Jordaan and his vice-president, who is also chairman of National Soccer League (NSL), Irvin Khoza, CEO Tebogo Motlanthe, chief financial officer Gronie Hluyo and technical committee members, to explain progress in the federation.
There was a host of topics that were spoken about, but the Bafana coach drew attention, as well as development, finances and commercial viability, TV rights and many others subjects of concern.
Sudesh Singh, a member of Safa’s technical committee, outlined the process which was followed in appointing the 69-year-old Belgian coach.
He said key to their appointment of a coach to succeed axed Molefi Ntseki was to identify someone bearing in mind the performance objective of Safa, which is to integrate youth and experienced players.
He said out of the over 200 CV’s submitted, they whittled it down to a shortlist of five coaches, out of which three were local and two foreign.Singh laid it out clearly to the politicians that their preferred choice would have been a local coach but unfortunately, local coaches targeted were already contracted by their respective club.
“The CEO engaged them but they had contractual obligations with their clubs,” Singh told the portfolio committee members.
“We then came up with the name of Hugo Broos who had a similar success story. But our priority was to have a local coach drive this project, but having said that, I think we have the right man to drive this project. Our key objective is to have a group, crew of local coaches working with him. Eventually, they can take over and drive this project going forward.”
He dispelled the belief that South African football is in a dire state, like a patient in intensive care unit (ICU).
“Let me put it in context, at the PSL we have three clubs representing the country at Caf level (Champions League and Confederation Cup). SA football is in a healthy state, yes we understand the frustration of fans and media because Bafana are our flagship.”“A lot of positive work has been done. We do admit some shortcomings. We are still evaluating on our Vision 2022 project, which has been our long term plan,” said Singh.
