Former South African player Isaac ‘Shakes’ Kungwane has said that he is sure that manager Gordon Igesund is about to lose his job due to the impatient nature of the national football Association. South Africa are known to part with their coaches very soon if results do not improve.
South Africa were recently unable to progress into the latter stages of the African Nations championship, which is a tournament held for the locally-based players. South Africa were expected to dominate in this tournament after the recent World Cup 2014 gave them a lot of confidence.
However, they could not even reached the knockout stages of this tournament. There have also been allegations that the manager tried to influence players with aspects like bonuses during the tournament. It is expected that Igesund will clear his name over these allegations. However, he may not be the South African manager for too long according to Kungwane. He has also criticised the quickfire policy of the football Association by saying that any manager needs time to implement his ideas.
South Africa also failed to do well at the 2010 World Cup despite being the host. Kungwane says that sacking managers alone is not the solution to the problem. He wants the youth coaches to change their mentality as well.
“There have been a lot of news headlines that he even tried to influence player bonuses, so I think it is going to be difficult for him to stay on. As we all know, Safa are trigger happy, so I don’t see him retaining his job. The problem is that we are so impatient. Even in our PSL [Premier Soccer League], we can’t play a 16-year-old or a 17-year-old because of the coaches in this country. They are so scared of losing that [player] they even resort to playing negative football,” said Kungwane.