Johannesburg – The South African Football Association (Safa) is set to announce Benni McCarthy as the new coach of Bafana this week.
Afer last week’s bungling that saw the national association tweeting that an announcement would be made on Saturday – which was later postponed due to the unavailability of the identified candidate – Safa’s CEO Tebogo Motlanthe now seems to be playing his cards close to his chest.
Safa have now reverted to the initial list of fi ve candidates given to them by the technical committee chaired by national executive committee member Jack Maluleke.
In the initial list Pitso Mosimane and McCarthy were joint leaders with five votes each.
Mamelodi Sundowns co-coach Manqoba Mngqithi and Kaizer Chiefs’ Gavin Hunt were tied on second position with three votes each.
McCarthy is the head coach of Ama- Zulu and has done an incredible job with Usuthu.
AmaZulu are now challenging Mamelodi Sundowns for the PSL league title, something that has never happened in the history of the KwaZulu- Natal-based club in the PSL era.
However, if Safa goes for McCarthy – the most decorated and only South African to have won the Uefa Champions League – they will first have to deal with AmaZulu’s unwavering and steadfast chairperson Sandile Zungu, who told Sunday World that Usuthu deserves respect and that anything that creates or brings uncertainty is not welcomed at his club.
“For the record, no one from Safa, Benni or his business manager Rob Moore have spoken to me. It’s all speculation and one of the parties must know something at this stage; they have a moral obligation to AmaZulu.
It is difficult to run a business and invest so much to entertain speculation, we will cross that bridge when we get there.”
Zungu said all the talk about the club demanding R2-million for the release of Benni was just speculative nonsense.
“AmaZulu is a serious business and is a team that millions of supporters have invested their emotions in and we have to treat the club with respect,” he said.
South Africa are drawn in Group G for the 2022 Qatar World Cup qualifiers, together with Ghana, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe. Bafana kick-off their World Cup campaign with an away match against Zimbabwe in the first week of June 2021.
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