SA soccer lingers in the sick bay

For the next three weeks, Africa’s finest footballers will be in action for their countries in Gabon, fighting it out to be crowned winners of the 31st edition of the Africa Cup of Nations.

It won’t be an easy three weeks for South African fans as they, together with Nigeria, are notable absentees from the list of competing nations.

Bafana Bafana endured a horrible qualifying campaign for the continental showpiece, winning just one of their six matches.

Perhaps the period could best be used by former coach Shakes Mashaba to reflect on what went wrong while he was in charge of the national team.

Sure, it was not solely the coach’s fault Bafana aren’t playing in Gabon, but he needs to take a large chunk of the responsibility for their failure.

Mashaba is no longer Bafana coach.

He was suspended in November after a tirade aimed at his Safa bosses after Bafana’s 2-1 win over Senegal in World Cup qualifiers.

A month later he was fired.

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Mashaba has since lodged a case with the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration against Safa challenging the grounds of his dismissal.

His legal team want Safa not to appoint a new national coach until the entire legal process has taken its course.

We are certainly not trying to judge if firing Mashaba was the right or wrong decision, but failure to qualify for the Africa Cup of Nations clearly shows the state of our soccer was not as healthy as it should be.

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