Thabo Dladla is a highly committed youth coach and former professional player with AmaZulu FC. His weekly ‘Talking Football’ column in a Pietermaritzburg newspaper focuses on the game at the grassroots, not on the 2010 World Cup or the PSL. ‘There is something wrong when a country with over 48 million people and a huge football budget cannot produce good players,’ writes Dladla this week.
‘I still believe that our country has some of the best talent at U12 level but poor leadership is letting the youth down. We have too many politicians and sports leaders who are more interested in the benefits that can be gained for themselves, than the sport itself.
‘Post 2010 South African youth deserve better than what they are getting now. The transformation of football should be felt at the lowest of levels. We can no longer allow a situation where a few get fatter while the players continue to suffer.’
FIFA General Secretary Jerome Valcke revealed that tickets prices for South African residents will be slashed to ensure that all World Cup matches will be ’sold out’. Thousands of Category 2 and 3 tickets will be sold at Category 4 prices — twenty US dollars — although details on sales have not yet been released. This announcement came on the heels of news that FIFA expects to make a marginal loss on the tournament. Valcke placed part of the blame on airlines and travel agencies for overcharging foreign football tourists. In South Africa, however, FIFA’s byzantine ticketing process — heavily reliant on internet-based credit card sales — has been criticized. Others say Bafana Bafana’s mediocrity has not helped and that even the lower ticket prices are beyond the reach of most ordinary South Africans.
I just watched Clint Eastwood’s new film on South Africa’s victory in the 1995 rugby World Cup, one year after the country’s first democratic elections. Invictus (the title comes from an inspirational Victorian poem) stars Matt Damon as François Pienaar, captain of the Springboks, and Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. Based on John Carlin’s book Playing the Enemy, it’s pretty good for a sports movie, a genre not usually associated with great cinematography.
The basics: thanks to Mandela’s stewardship, an all-white team (with one exception) goes from representing a sport synonymous with white supremacy to embodying the seemingly boundless potential of the postapartheid “rainbow nation.” There are some good moments. Like the team’s surprise visit to Robben Island prison, where the apartheid regime imprisoned Mandela and many other black activists during the country’s struggle for freedom. Props to Damon’s rugby moves, which are almost as good as his Afrikaans-inflected English, and to Freeman for closely matching Madiba’s physical movements and cadence. I enjoyed some of the sporting action as well, particularly the camera shots from inside the scrums.
Regrettably, sentimentality and cheesy music weaken the film. The lack of historical context and the refusal to develop any of the film’s characters (except Madiba) are also striking. We never get to know where the players come from, what their lives are like, and what happens to them after The Game. Same goes for the black and white bodyguards — a constituency usually at center stage only in movies such as In The Line of Fire and its ilk. While the final scenes project the fiction that 1995 transformed rugby from a white-dominated sport to a fully integrated one, the truth is much less uplifting. But then again, this is Hollywood history.
1. FIFA got the seedings right. Pot 1 seeds earned their ranking. France did not. France’s final appearance was four years ago.
2. Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay have come out of the pot alignment better than most. Each of the smaller South American nations will avoid the big five African qualifiers in the 1st Round.
3. Argentina and Brazil cannot avoid the African qualifiers from Pot 3. The seeds for two potential Groups of Death have now been sown. Has FIFA put Brazil at risk for an early bath?
4. The most frightening Group of Death would be: Brazil, Mexico, Côte d’Ivoire and Portugal.
People living in poverty near Soccer City stadium outside Johannesburg battle police during anti-World Cup protests. Local residents demand houses rather than world-class stadiums.
Keeping football real. Hundreds of older South African women play the game after cleaning houses, cooking meals, or selling food in township streets. 83-year-old Nora Makhubela, a survivor of eight strokes, told Reuters: “I pray every day to God to keep me alive until 2010. I would really love to watch the games,” she said. Vakhegula Vakhegula (”grannies” in the local language) might even teach Bafana Bafana a thing or two.
Bafana’s Brazilian coach, Joel Santana, is out of a job. Pallid performances and pitiful results sunk the former Flamengo coach. “In the bigger picture and the interest of the country,” said Mandla Mazibuko, SAFA vice-president, “he [Santana] realized while he was doing his best, his best was not good enough.”
Hand-picked by Bafana’s previous coach and fellow brasileiro Carlos Alberto Parreira, Santana lasted 18 months at the helm of the national side of the 2010 World Cup host country. His most notable achievement was a 4th-place finish in the 2009 Confederations Cup, which some critics opined was assisted by a lucky draw that placed South Africa in a group with minnows New Zealand and Iraq.
Football-mad South Africans have every reason to be worried. A few months before the World Cup and Bafana are rudderless and adrift. SAFA’s decision about Santana’s successor may be announced on Friday. Parreira is lurking in the shadows.
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