Bafana Bafana’s most successful coach Clive Barker has called on the South African Football Association (Safa) to set up a round table meeting with former local born national coaches as a matter of urgency. Barker, who won the 1996 African Nations Cup on home soil, is alarmed by the way Brazilian coach Joel Santana is wrecking the national side.
Said a worried Barker on Thursday: “What Safa must do urgently is get all the local born former Bafana coaches who had success with Bafana, such as myself, Trott Moloto, Shakes Mashaba and Jomo Sono, to a meeting to try and plan a way forward. We are going backwards with Santana. He is way out of his depth.”
Santana has come in for mounting criticism from fans and the media after winning only one of the seven matches in which he has been in charge.
Santana was chosen by former Bafana coach Carlos Alberto Parreira after the Brazilian World Cup winner shocked the country by resigning in May owing to his wife’s ill health.
A senior Bafana player on condition of anonymity said: “The coach (Santana) always says we played well even when we played badly such as against Guinea on Tuesday night. There is no communication as he cannot speak English and we cannot work out what he wants and, worst of all, there is no motivation. We respected and liked Parreira and want him back.”
Barker went further: “How on earth could Safa appoint a coach who cannot speak English. It is mind boggling. What were Safa thinking?
We have credible coaches in South Africa who can do a far better job.”
Barker known as “The Dog” barked at Safa chief executive officer Raymond Hack and laid much of the blame at his feet: “I will tell Hack to his face when I see him that I am very disappointed in the way he is running Safa.
By appointing Santana, who has no experience of international soccer, Safa are making Bafana a laughing stock.
We need to stop the rot quickly. My solution is to get a body of former Bafana coaches to run the ship in the meantime. We all had some success so we could not be that bad.
