Durban - Banyana Banyana showed Bafana Bafana how it’s done by beating Nigeria 2-1 in their Wafcon opener in Morocco on Monday.
What is impressive is that the national women’s team beat the top ranked side in Africa even though they get a fraction of the funding and recognition that goes towards men’s football development in South Africa.
By contrast, there is a gulf in class between the SA men’s national team and the top ranked sides in Africa and it is going to take a long time before this can be overcome. The top ranked men’s teams in Africa is made up of players who mainly play in Europe’s top leagues, while there are only a handful of SA men’s players who have the quality to play in one of Europe’s top five leagues right now.
Banyana are yet to win a continental crown while
Bafana won Afcon in 1996, but the women’s team have been more consistent in continental competition. Realistically, Bafana have not been serious contenders to win Afcon since 2004. Since 1995, Banyana have been runners-up in Wafcon five times, including 2018, the last edition of the showpiece when they finished as runners-up to Nigeria.
This year could finally be the time when South Africa gets their maiden Wafcon title.
Seven of the Banyana Wafcon players play in Europe with Thembi Kgatlana notably playing for Atletico Madrid and Refiloe Jane for AC Milan. If our men’s team had players playing for clubs such as these, they would be celebrated left right and centre while Kgatlana and Jane really only get modest recognition by the South African public at large.
It’s about time that the men’s game in the country puts its ego aside and starts looking at things that are done in the women’s game that it is not doing and even consider the introduction of women into management aspects of the men’s game.
Good management has no gender bias and Chelsea women’s manager Emma Hayes highlighted that a change in mindset within football, which includes the mindset of the South African game, is needed.
“Managing people has no gender bias but unfortunately football is still stuck in the Victorian era where it thinks the only way to get the most out of professional athletes is with traditional management techniques,” she said.
While it may take a long time for it to happen, the introduction of women’s managers to English Premier League football is being discussed and according to commentator Andy Townsend, something that is “inevitable”. Hayes herself was strongly linked with English League One club
AFC Wimbledon in 2021 but dismissed the links, stating that Wimbledon “would not be able to afford her”.
With the SA women’s team also doing considerably better than our men’s team at international level, it is also something that should be discussed locally.