Johannesburg – The DA would be pleased to learn that Danny Jordaan was stuck for some time in Port Elizabeth on Thursday, the president of the South African Football Association (Safa) leaving many a journalist waiting for him for hours in Joburg.
Proof that the man largely credited with bringing the soccer World Cup to South Africa in 2010 has bitten off more than he can chew by accepting his posting as mayor of the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality, right? Surely this is a sign that the man is going to struggle juggling the two very important posts he now occupies?
And besides, as the DA was quick to point out, the appointment of Safa’s president as mayor is against the Safa constitution that promotes neutrality, via Article 3:1 – Safa are neutral in matters of politics and religion – right?
But is Jordaan’s appointment really as bad as it has been made out to be? Is his new role as mayor in conflict with his current position as leader of the country’s football governing body?
The man himself believes there’s no such conflict, as one would expect, you’d say.
“What the DA does not get is the fact that as an association we are neutral. Never will you see Safa standing up and publicly declaring our support for the ANC or any other political party. But as individuals we all belong to different parties and different churches.
“We have people in the Safa executive committee who are members of the EFF and even the DA and some of them are mayors or even members of Parliament.”
Perhaps what those against Jordaan’s appointment as mayor are not aware of is the small matter of the man’s long-standing membership of the ANC, Jordaan having also been a member of Parliament when the new dispensation was ushered in when he was also Safa’s deputy president.
While some feel that one or both of his roles will suffer as he shuttles between PE and Joburg, Jordan was quick to point out he has previously occupied two posts and did well.
“I was Safa chief executive and also ran both our World Cup bids, one of which was successful, so this is nothing new for me.”
The small matter of the DA getting their knickers in a knot over his dual role out of the way, Jordaan was quick to delve into matters football as he glowingly described what he feels are milestones for the association under his care.
In what would have passed for a masterclass in diverting the attention from the big issue at hand (his mayoral appointment), Jordaan rattled off so many of what he believes are the positives that the association – read president – is clearly not getting credit for.
“Safa is in a much better state now than it used to be before we took over. And financially we couldn’t be in a better position. There is the money from the Siyaya (TV) deal (worth R1 billion) coming in and there’s also the R100m grant from Fifa for the technical centre that will strengthen our balance sheet.”
The association should be appointing a technical director soon, he added.
The financial stability, Jordaan believes, will make it easy for the association to tackle the second half of their tenure with some confidence and among their goals is to see the national teams qualifying for major events and doing well.
“We already have the Under-17s going to the World Cup in Chile in October and that makes us very happy. The good thing about this tournament is that it is a great leveller because the teams going there are all first-timers. So all we need do is ensure that the team has thorough preparations.”
Jordaan says the national Under-23 side will be taking part in the qualifiers for the Olympic Games taking place in Rio next year. Banyana Banyana have already started their attempt to earn their ticket to Brazil, having played their first-round, first-leg qualifier against Gabon in Libreville yesterday.
His administration, he pointed out, was hell-bent on doing away with the generally held notion that to play for the senior national men’s team – Bafana Bafana – one has to be a member of the country’s 16 elite league teams or play for an overseas side.
“When we won the Afcon (Africa Cup of Nations) in 1996, we had a pool of about 200 players to choose from. That pool has since been cut into half over the years and we decided that we need to look beyond the PSL.
“We want to make sure other players feel they don’t have to play for the top 16 or in Europe before they can be recognised for Bafana. And it is for this reason that, when you look at the teams Shakes (Mashaba, the Bafana coach) has selected for the Cosafa Cup taking place in Rustenburg and the other previous matches, there has been players from the so-called smaller leagues.”
With qualification for the next Afcon as well as the 2018 World Cup due to begin in July, Jordaan expressed confidence that South Africa should be able to put up a squad decent enough to compete and the issue of player unavailability will not be a problem as in the past.
Issues such as the training and development of coaches as well as Safa taking over schools’ sport also fell off the soccer (and don’t forget political) supremo’s tongue.
“We’re supposed to produce 10000 coaches a year, but I can assure you we have made significant strides.
“From producing a mere 375 coaches we’re now up to 2000 and at the top level we have coaches who are doing A and B licences.
“Safa has since taken over the running of schools’ sport and we have about 20000 schools playing soccer.
“And if you add the junior clubs that are part of our LFAs (Local Football Associations) in our 52 regions, you will find that we have no less than 60000 junior teams active in this country, and that is a very positive step in relation to Safa’s Vision 2022,” he said.
It all sounded grand. And those close to the game and aware of Safa’s sorry state before Jordaan became president will nod in agreement that the man has changed the state of the local game for the better.
But it will all have sounded like a self-promotional and keeping-out-the-fires exercise, coming in the week when everyone was questioning his appointment as mayor of his home city and wondering if there wasn’t a conflict.
Perhaps, in the end, the next few months will be telling as Jordaan juggles the two very demanding jobs.
The fact that he arrived very late for his media round-table discussion on Thursday, though, sent a very bad signal, his excuse that his flight was delayed due to technical hitches notwithstanding.