Inadequate players to blame for failure

OOPS, the South African Football Association (Safa) did it again. Gordon Igesund has been given his marching orders, the reason behind it being he did not fulfil the mandate given to him by Safa.

Can anybody answer me when is this chopping and changing of coaches going to end? With Safa if you do not see eye to eye or the spectators do not like your style of coaching, you will just go – there is no second chance at all.

Since our readmission to world soccer Safa has been changing coaches as if they are changing their socks and what kind of association is that? You must practise what you preach.

If I can remember correctly when Danny Jordaan assumed his office, he promised the nation that his main priority would be establishing all the junior national squads so that it would be easier for national coaches to select the best national squad. My question for him: has he done that?

I am not trying to protect Igesund. I think Safa should consider giving him a job maybe as a director of development.

I saw from the start he was there all alone, he was set to fail and there was no assistance from Safa. You cannot produce the best squad from the average pool of players.

You get a country like ours with a top goal scorer scoring 10 goals for the entire season, and you call him a deadly striker and expect us to beat the best country in the world. We will be daydreaming or lying to ourselves – it will not happen.

We have hired the best coaches in the world before and not a single one was successful. We can hire the World Cup-winning coach even now and he will not win – I can put my head on the block about that.

The problem is not with the coach, it is the product that is not a good quality. I squarely put the blame on the development programme which is not working.

I can make an example about the other two top sporting codes we have in this country – cricket and rugby. If you can take a batsman, an U11 boy and national squad player, their playing technique is the same.

Why do we not have this uniformity in soccer? If we do not train and use proper qualified coaches at development level our football is going nowhere.

We also have a very beautiful infrastructure in place. Why do we not use it to our own advantage? We must set up a proper development structure now or let us forget about qualifying for the World Cup.

Mzwandile Pepe Nkomombini, cricket coach, administrator and umpire, Zwide, Port Elizabeth