02 September 2019, by: Leonard Solms

WHY MOLEFI NTSEKI IS WORTH HIS SPOT AS BAFANA BAFANA COACH

In football, head coaches tend to shoulder the lion’s share of praise or criticism for their teams’ results. Too often, the public gives insufficient thought to the technical teams working with them. Molefi Ntseki may not have steered the ship at a top team before, but amid regular arrivals and departures around him, he has certainly helped steady Bafana Bafana’s.

Ntseki’s appointment as permanent head coach may have come as a surprise, but it was by no means undeserved. He has been a vital cog in the machine at the South African Football Association (SAFA) from the beginning of their ‘Vision 2022’ project. As qualifiers for the World Cup in Qatar draw nearer, who better to lead South Africa than the coach who has been laying the foundations for this team since he took charge of the U17 men’s national team (Amajimbos) in 2014?

Amajimbos flourished under Ntseki’s leadership, immediately qualifying for the 2015 U17 World Cup in Chile. It was their first ever appearance at the tournament and was earned through a best-ever second-place finish at the 2015 African U17 Championship.

Ntseki has served as a Bafana Bafana assistant coach under Shakes Mashaba, Owen da Gama and the recently departed Stuart Baxter. This in addition to having worked as Serame Letsoaka’s assistant for the men’s U20 national team (Amajita).

His highest-profile club job has been at Bloemfontein Celtic, where he was an assistant coach from 2010 to 2012. This will inevitably be used against him by critics, but why should we judge an international coach by his club credentials?

As Ntseki himself told SAFA’s website: “Pressure is a relative term and don’t forget before becoming an interim Bafana Bafana coach, I have been with the Senior Men’s National team for a long time now.

“I was assistant to Shakes Mashaba, to Owen da Gama during the two games he was in charge and recently I was assistant to coach Stuart Baxter. All these tenures have prepared me enough to stand on my own. We went as far as the quarter-finals in Egypt and I was very much part of the decision making processes and with any coach I have worked with.”

For an example of a successful national team boss who has followed a similar trajectory, look no further than England’s Gareth Southgate.

The former Middlesbrough and England U21 manager took over the senior men’s national team under less than ideal circumstances in 2016. Sam Allardyce had left the job by mutual agreement after one game following newspaper allegations that he had offered advice on how to bend English transfer regulations.

Following a disastrous Euro 2016 campaign under Roy Hodgson, which ended in a 2-1 last 16 defeat to Iceland, the Three Lions were in dire need of direction. Having been involved in the process of developing some of England’s top players, Southgate gave them the stability they needed. The rest is history as they reached the World Cup semi-finals last year for the first time since 1990.

The squad Ntseki took to the 2015 U17 World Cup featured the likes of Reeve Frosler, Keanu Cupido, Mondli Mpoto and Khulekani Kubheka. These are all players with immense potential, and who better to guide them towards fulfilling it than the man whose coaching career has literally grown side-by-side with them?

Of course, Ntseki was not the only local coach linked with the Bafana job. Gavin Hunt and Benni McCarthy have won trophies at club level recently, while Steve Komphela and Owen da Gama have worked within SAFA’s structures.

However, if South Africa’s football authorities were looking for a coach with intimate knowledge of their Vision 2022 project to tie the loose ends, they could not have done any better.

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