Buffoona Buffoona: Do we even need a coach?

Out to lunch
David Bullard

Soccer..... I have been paying attention to press reports recently and notice that it's been much in the local news lately because the coach (who struggles by on about R1.5m a month) has been given his marching orders. He was apparently a foreign chappie who couldn't speak any of our 11 official languages which might have made life a bit difficult I guess. Still, one and a half bar a month isn't to be sniffed at.

Obviously somebody appointed him to the job and I guess that must have been SAFA and the general assemblage of vacuous blazers that make up that organisation. So it's actually their fault because you've got to be a complete anagram of a Danish king to appoint someone with no previous experience of international coaching and who can't speak any of the languages to a job paying that much. Apparently SAFA were acting on the recommendation of a previous coach who also could hardly speak any intelligible language and had a similar lack of success with the local squad. He pushed off home to be at his sick wife's bedside but not before he had also helped himself to large amounts of our moolah. Shades of SAA about all this don't you think?

So now we're looking for a new coach to bring the team that is currently at number 85 in the world (didn't know there were that many countries that played football) up to speed a mere few months before we host the FIFA World Cup. Well, I'm no soccer expert but it ain't going to happen because the problem isn't just the coach, it's the players. Put bluntly, they're not very good at doing the job they are being paid to do. Which means that they are proud South Africans because our peculiar economic system encourages the employment of people who are incapable of doing what they are paid to do on condition that they pass the melanin test. If we had an all white national football squad we might actually win a game but the ANC wouldn't like it. But then again they complained bitterly about the whiteness of our national rugby team until they won the world cup. Then they were all over them like a bad rash because they realised there might be some money in it for them. If we continue to insist on racial demographics in sport and business then we are doomed to mediocrity. Winning nations appoint the best person for the job.

The question that puzzles me is why we need a coach at all. It's been demonstrated that an orchestra will continue to play without a conductor and that newspapers still get produced even when the editor spends most of his time in a bar. So why do we need a coach? What does he do anyway for R1.5m? Surely the team members know that the ball is the thing they are supposed to kick, have a rough idea of the rules of the game and know which goal post to aim for. Apart from energetically chewing gum, pacing the borders of the pitch and yelling encouragement in a language that none of the players understand it seems that Mr Santana had a pretty easy job. Dare I suggest Kirsten that I could have done the same for a fraction of the cost and been a damn sight more entertaining.

Quite honestly it doesn't matter who is appointed as coach to the national soccer squad because the money is so good that it's of no concern if the team win anything ever again. For one and half million a month I also wouldn't give a toss about the result. On the other hand it is going to be very embarrassing when we make the record books for being the first country ever to host the World Cup to be eliminated in the first round. That's going to really give the nation a sense of pride isn't it?