Safa top dogs must step up or opt out

Bafana Bafana’s calamitous failure to qualify for next year’s Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) is just the latest of a long line of disasters from the men’s senior national team.

Molefi Ntseki’s side slumped to a 2-0 defeat to Sudan in Omdurman on Sunday, a result that meant Sudan, and not Bafana, joined Ghana in the finals in Cameroon next year.

This will be the second finals in a row where the number of teams competing has increased from 16 to 24, theoretically making it easier to qualify.

Bafana, however, don’t know the meaning of making anything easy and needed a result in Tunisia against Libya in their final qualifier to make it to the 2019 tournament.

ALSO READ: Sudan dump sorry Bafana out of Afcon 

They got it that time but this time, they flopped at the final hurdle, the fourth time in their past seven attempts that Bafana have failed to make it to the Afcon finals.

Ntseki may well lose his job in the coming days but Bafana’s toils speak of a systemic failure that goes way beyond the head coach.

And although coaches are hired and fired with wild abandon, no one in power at the South African Football Association (Safa) ever seems to take responsibility for this growing list of embarrassments.

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.