Benchmarking is no crime

Thuso Palai | Tuesday November 5, 2013 12:10

 

Yes; we live in different football worlds, but at the end of the day football is football, and there are commonalities. When a leader takes over, they immediately outline their vision and tell the nation what they want to achieve, within what time frame and how they will go about achieving those targets they set for themselves.  Tebogo Sebego did the same, and in hindsight after hearing what the other guys presented, I started asking myself questions. Did we really focus on the most critical and most pertinent issues?

I listened in on inaugural speeches made by the English FA Chairman John Dykes and South African Football Association President Danny Jordan when they took over recently and they got me thinking. They have clearly set themselves targets, with time frames and presented their roadmap towards achieving those goals. One might ask; why I’m bringing this up when Sebego himself did the same. Yes; Sebego did the same when he took over but in hindsight, I think he had his priorities in the wrong order. I stand to be corrected though. The two gentlemen I mention, immediately talked about development structures and putting in structures and resources to ensure that they start right at the bottom.

As for Sebego, his main agenda was commercialization. Football commercialization is important, but I wonder how we can commercialize football when we have dysfunctional structures, especially development structures.  Sebego has good intentions; and maybe he now needs to put in place the necessary structures to make his vision a reality. He needs an NEC and a Secretariat that is singing the same hymn with him. At the moment it doesn’t look that way and I wonder if indeed he will achieve what he has set himself. He is well aware of that, and he better do something, if not; he knows the buck stops with him, and soon rather than later, hard questions will hoard on him.

Dykes and Jordan  made development their main key performance area. England and South Africa, for their different standards, just like Botswana have been perennial under achievers and this is because of lack of sustained and structured development of players in the countries, amongst other reasons. That is where we should also focus; Development of players from an early age. I know that Dykes has set up an FA Commission to try and investigate the under performance of the various national teams and the sorry state of their development structures. This Commission is made up of former coaches, administrators and most importantly former national team players. They will eventually come up with a master plan as to how to improve the fortunes of England, starting right at grassroot development. Maybe we need something like that as well. I know that we have a National team preparations committee, but that is not enough as it only focuses on the senior national team, and in most cases, only when it is in camp or just before camps.

In addition; Dykes has set the national team a target that they should seriously challenge for the 2018 Euros and the 2022 World Cup. Yes; he is being ambitious; but what is worth noting is that he is doing something to drive towards achieving that. If he is successful in the development aspect, then these same players that he is putting structures in place for now and developing would be the ones playing in those Championships. That is his vision. For me; that’s the right way of doing it: have a vision; and then put in place structures, resources, right personnel with vigor to drive towards that Vision.

As for Jordan, he bemoaned the haphazard state of development structures in RSA. Just like Dykes he has set himself targets, and most of those are set round development from grassroots. When the BFA fired Tshosane last month, all those who were against were asking as to how we expected Tshosane to be a world beater when he has no developmental structures to dip from. Fair point they were making.  Maybe that’s where we should start so we don’t make excuses of the national team coaches.

Unlike some people; I’m still of the view that all is not lost, and we are not way off track. I believe that the current BFA President has brilliant ideas to take our football forward. He just needs to streamline and ensure that he has the right people, in the right positions, doing the right things. It is critical that everyone is on the same page and singing the same hymn with him, otherwise he won’t achieve much.