What has SA soccer achieved?

From the Sports Mongrel blog

I don't mean to be an ultra-SA-pessimist but the question has to be asked - what exactly has South African soccer achieved in the last 5 years?

This was the question going through my mind after the 0-0 draw with Iraq on Sunday evening.

Sponsors have poured an absolute bucket-load into player development, coaches, improving league standards etc and all the while the average ranking of South Africa in global terms has gone down. If I remember correctly we are now ranked 72nd in the world.

That is disappointing considering that in terms of rand invested per player, we must be one of the highest on the continent.

The African countries ranked above us at this moment in time according to the Fifa rankings at the start of June are:

• Cameroon (21)
• Nigeria (30)
• Ghana (36)
• Ivory Coast (38)
• Egypt (40)
• Gabon (48)
• Burkina Faso (50)
• Tunisia (51)
• Guinea (53)
• Mali (54)
• Morocco (55)
• Gambia (65)
• Algeria (66)
• Uganda (67)
• Togo (68)
• Libya (69)

If I understand the rankings correctly then we need to bear in mind that apart from Nigeria and Cameroon, we've played far tougher opposition than many of these other teams so our rankings might suffer a bit.

Can I pinpoint why we don't succeed? Nope.

We have money, we have players, we have (in many cases) world class administrators who have put us in front of the world with match-ups against the worlds best.

Is it our coaches? Aaaahh now this is a question that begs to be asked. Phillipe Troussier and Carlos Alberto Parreira are some of the biggest names in world football. Joel Santana was hand-picked by Parreira (who one must assumes knows what he was doing).

Go back in history and see who SA's most successful coaches were - Clive Barker and Jomo Sono - two South African guys with limited international know-how but an ability to gel with their local players.

Personally I think it could be a more fundamental problem - South African football has no real strategy. We talk a big game with big ambitions but if you zero in on it - we don't really have an overall strategy for SA soccer in terms of where we want to be and no accountability in terms of achieving it.

To me it is mind-boggling that we can't qualify for the African Nations Cup?! But there doesn't seem to have been repercussions for those in charge or being paid to perform on the field. You can rebuild as much as you like, I get the sense that South Africa is simply trying to shoot too high with the wrong resources.

If a decent plan isn't in place then we need to accept that perhaps its better we pour money into BMX or tennis or even lawn-darts rather than overspending on soccer.