Johannesburg – Danny Jordaan on Wednesday dodged questions about the future of Gordon Igesund as Bafana Bafana coach.
The new president of the South African Football Association (Safa) also did not want to talk about the coach’s mandate for CHAN (African Nations Championship) in January. It is, however, generally believed that Igesund will have to at least make the final to convince the head honchos to extend his contract, which ends in June.
Jordaan said that there would be a National Executive meeting on Saturday but the national team coaches will not get a chance to make presentations on their plans for their respective teams because Igesund is away with Bafana.
The make-up of a technical committee that will listen to the coaches’ presentations will be announced at this weekend’s meeting.
“Unfortunately, Gordon Igesund will not be present at the meeting, so it seems we will probably have to wait another week or two to get all the coaches in one room, with the national executive, for them to present their plans. But what we will have to do in the interim is to appoint a technical team. And that technical team will start engaging with all the coaches and bring the reports to the executive meeting of Safa. So on Saturday we will announce the individuals who are part of the technical team. And then at a later stage we will be able to answer all the questions about coaches,” he said.
Jordaan was speaking at a conference to announce that petroleum company Sasol have come on board as Safa’s first partners for the Vision 2022 project. The project includes the training and licensing of thousands of coaches, the identification and development of talent from the earliest age, as well as organisation of structured competition at a local football association (LFA) level.
Sasol have been involved as partners of the national women’s team Banyana Banyana for years now and previously sponsored the national under-23s with great success, as they qualified for the 2000 Olympics.
“When we were preparing to take office, we identified development as the key priority of the Safa administration. This sponsorship will inspire confidence in our Vision 2022 in the business sector, and will provide us with an important starting point for the implementation of our plan,” Jordaan said. “The bigger picture for us is the World Cup in 2022.”
It is with this development view in mind that Jordaan applauded Igesund’s squad selection for the friendly international against 2015 Africa Cup of Nations hosts Morocco tomorrow.
Igesund named a number of youngsters for the match as Bafana build for the future following the country’s failure to qualify for the 2014 World Cup. Jordaan said it is important to have players who, four years from now, will be at their peak to try to help Bafana qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
“Absolutely (happy with the selection),” he said. “The next World Cup is 2018. There are three tournaments before that. You have the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco, do we have the players to qualify for Morocco? And then 2016 is the Olympics in Rio. We have to qualify and if we get past those two then we can talk about 2018.
“So any player that you select now, you must add four years to his age and then ask if this player is still going to be on top of his game in 2018. And Gordon has indicated that is what he has already considered,” said Jordaan.
The Star