Soccer

Clint

There’s an African tale that best describes the way Safa have gone about trying to get Bafana Bafana to realize its true potential and it goes something like this… There once was a young wife in an African village and she was having problems in her marriage. Her husband was a good man, but they were always fighting and the relationship seemed doomed. In desperation the wife went to a village elder to ask for a solution. The elder said that he could make up a magic potion that could be used to fix the relationship and make the problems go away. That he had all the ingredients for the potion except one… a whisker from the face of a living lion. Excited that there was apparently a quick-fix solution to her problem, the wife went down to a river where she knew a lion regularly came down to drink. With her she took some meat. She left it out and hid behind a tree. The lion saw this from a distance and approached and ate the meat. The next day the wife repeated the procedure…this time the lion came immediately and the wife was able to slowly gain the lion’s trust. After months of doing this, the lion finally took the meat from the woman’s hand, which gave her the opportunity to pluck a whisker from the lion’s face. Delighted, she ran off to the village elder to hand him the final ingredient for the magic potion that would fix all her problems. The elder took the lion’s whisker and pointed out that if the wife had just bothered to take as much time and care investing in the relationship with her husband as she had in trying to find a quick-fix solution, her problems would have been long gone. He added that any potion he gave her would merely run out and she would be stuck with the same problems.  Carlos Alberto Parreira is the latest ‘lion’s whisker’ that Safa spent time, money and energy on in an attempt to find a quick-fix solution to South African football. Joel Santana, Carlos Queiroz, Stuart Baxter, Jomo Sono, Philippe Troussier… the list goes on. Bafana’s failure to qualify for the second round of the World Cup is not Parreira’s failure. It is not Teko Modise’s failure or Aaron Mokoena’s failure. It is simply a message from the game itself. Treat me with the respect I deserve, and you will reap the rewards. Use me only when it suits you, and you will be found out. The custodians of soccer in South Africa have been well and truly found out. The very next step they take is absolutely crucial.