Editor's Column - Clint Roper
Editor's Blog By Clint Roper.
It's crazy times in South African soccer, as always is the case round about this period of the year. The Siya crew is tracking every lead with regards to player and coach movements and we'll do our best to make sure that if it happens, you read it first on one of Soccer Laduma's many platforms. If you are a soccer nut like all of us, and if the paper is your main source of news, during the transfer window you are missing so much if you are not on our website. While your newspaper does a great job breaking news and getting out some hot interviews, the reality is that we're hamstrung by the weekly cycle when it comes to giving you news as it happens. Because of this, I urge you all to make sure you get on www.snl24.com/soccerladuma and pay specific attention to our Transfer Section, where about 90 percent of all big, breaking South African football news stories are reported first. As I write this column in a cold, wet Cape Town, Shakes Mashaba is readying the troops for a game against Angola. By the time you read this, the game will have been played and, if we have scored a glut of goals, then this will not read well. But the fact of the matter is that the general feeling I get from Soccer Laduma's readers is that there is very little hope of ever dominating our continent or becoming a force on the world stage. We play some very attractive football at times, but the perennial problem of being unable to score goals is holding us back. You can't really blame Shakes for that. He inherits this problem from the players who have come through the South African development system. It's SAFA's job to make sure development structures are in place to groom players and therefore I feel the solution lies squarely in their lap. If you read Kermit Erasmus' revolving column this week, you will find a frustrated striker who seems to indicate that Shakes needs to have a look at who is scoring goals in the PSL and pick accordingly, and maybe he has a point, but the fact of the matter remains that generally we just don't produce predatory goalscorers. I'm not sure what the solution is, because if you try address it with senior players, they have already been hardwired and development there is very difficult. Essentially, what you see is what you get. It has to start at a much younger age, but then, once again, we will get the old story that it will take another 10 years or so before world-class players start coming through the ranks. I'm all for a short-term pain, long-term gain approach, but for South Africans it seems it is short-term pain, long-term pain eventuality. The country is actually just fed up now with Bafana Bafana and our inability to perform in competitive football. Something needs to be done… We called it a while back already, but it is still shocking that Golden Arrows have let Shaun Bartlett go when you consider he got them back to the big show. Serame Letsoaka is a top coach and Gordon Igesund will miss his right-hand man, but how do you let go of the guys that got you back? It just makes no sense and you can hear a little from the understandably disappointed Bartlett in this week's NFD focus. At times it gets quite difficult to defend South African soccer with some of the strange happenings on our coaching merry-go-round. From a South African perspective, it's encouraging to see that the Big Three, as well as Bafana Bafana, have local coaches at the helm. This is not to say that foreign coaches are no good or that we don't want them here, but more that the cry from the local guys has been to give the local coaches a chance. Sundowns have Pitso Mosimane, Pirates have Eric Tinkler, Bafana have Shakes Mashaba and, more than likely, Steve Komphela, who resigned from his Maritzburg coaching position recently, will be named Kaizer Chiefs' new head coach today (Wednesday). I'm not sure when last that has happened in South African football, but it should hopefully result in the kind of display we saw from Orlando Pirates against AS Kaloum. What a pleasure that was to watch! If Orlando Pirates play that type of football in the new season, they will fill stadiums wherever they go! What surprised me was that Eric Tinkler is not known as a coach who encourages that type of thing. He has always struck me as a coach who wants you to do the basics right, put in an honest shift and stick to the fundamentals. But I was sorely wrong and, when chatting to Tebza (Tebogo Moloi) after the game, he said that Eric was the first off the bench when some of the trickery began. In particular he enjoyed when Thabo Qalinge caught the ball on the back of his neck. I'm told before the game that Qalinge said to Eric that he would show him something he had never seen in a live football match, and he certainly delivered. Pep Guardiola famously said when he took over as head coach at Barcelona, "I cannot promise titles, but I am convinced the supporters will be proud of us." One could feel Orlando Pirates supporters swelling with pride over these last two weeks as clips of their team's performance went viral all over South Africa. If it had just been the tricks, it wouldn't have been good enough, but when you combine it with the incredible distribution and goals, well… this is what South African football looks like when it smiles. Shappa, Clint
