CARETAKER Bafana Bafana coach Steve Komphela may be one of the candidates for the vacant coaching post, but former national team midfielder Quinton Fortune believes that the interim mentor should rather serve as assistant to fellow contender Gavin Hunt.
Komphela will be at the helm when Bafana host Gabon in a friendly international at Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit tonight and Fortune said yesterday he believed the job was too big for the caretaker coach to handle on his own.
"If I were to recommend a coach for Bafana in the short term I would go for Gavin Hunt and he would work with Steve Komphela," the erstwhile Manchester United utility player said.
"I have worked with Steve and he has got all the determination. I have heard a lot about Gavin and I have been told that he is tough, hungry and he wants to win.
"He (Steve) needs help because it is such a big job. With Bafana you do not know because you will get the job now and after two or three games if things do not go well you get sacked. That is the name of the game at moment. We need results at the moment. We need Safa (the South African Football Association) to work with the manager instead of against him, as we have seen in the past, to make sure that the team is successful," Fortune said.
The coaching position became vacant after Pitso Mosimane was sacked following Bafana’s costly 1-1 home draw with 138th-ranked Ethiopia in a 2014 Soccer World Cup qualifier two weeks ago.
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| Gavin Hunt |
Komphela was asked to take over as caretaker coach as Bafana had another qualifier against Botswana, which they also drew 1-1 in Gabarone last Saturday.
Fortune admitted that he had not seen any of these matches and that the last time he watched Bafana play was during the Soccer World Cup two years ago.
"Those players (who played in the World Cup) do not become bad overnight. We just have to find out what makes them tick. I do not want to criticise and want to be positive about the team’s revival. We cannot get any worse. Where are we going to go? We cannot beat ourselves?"
Tovey, Hunt, Mashaba and Igesund were all interviewed yesterday, while Komphela will face the panel on Monday morning.
Fortune said Mashaba should be allowed to rather continue working with the under-23 side as he has had some level of success at that level.
The Safa panel that interviewed the candidates yesterday consisted of Safa technical committee chairman Fanyana Sibanyoni, technical director Serame Letsoaka, CEO Robin Petersen, Jomo Cosmos owner Jomo Sono, former Bafana coach Clive Barker, analyst and coach Farouk Khan and coach Suoane Ramashala. The interview process was overseen by auditors Ernst & Young.
Sibanyoni said he was happy with the way things went yesterday and hopes to wrap everything by next week with the conclusion of Komphela’s interview after he returns from Nelspruit.
"The committee was very happy with the whole exercise and once we finish interviewing Steve, the process of finding a new coach will almost be complete, with only the approval of the Safa executive committee remaining," Sibanyoni said.
Bafana will return to Nelspruit for the first time since they embarrassed the whole country after mistakenly believing that their 0-0 draw with Sierra Leone at Mbombela Stadium in October was enough to qualify for this year’s African Nations Cup.
Oblivious to this, the Bafana players treated the near-capacity crowd at Mbombela and millions of television viewers to a tasteless choreographed dance routine after the final whistle.
They completed the whole embarrassing spectacle by going on a victory lap of honour around the stadium. These images went around the world and such was the spectacle of it all that the Confederation of African Football (Caf) eventually saw the need to clarify the issue.
Then the sobering news began to filter through from Caf’s headquarters in Cairo and the reality was that Niger had actually qualified.
The images of that embarrassing episode have begun to surface once again and Kaizer Chiefs goalkeeper Itumeleng Khune, in particular, will be more ashamed as he led the whole dance spectacle.
Khune and his team-mates should be desperate to redeem themselves as the national team has not been the same since that fateful day in October.
Another draw or worse, a defeat, would plunge the national team to imaginable levels of despair.
ntlokom@bdfm.co.za
Source : Businessday.co.za
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