INCOMING Bafana Bafana head coach Pitso Mosimane is on a mission to strengthen football in South Africa - and he wants to do it from the ground up.
To achieve that, Mosimane knows he needs the buy-in of all South Africans.
“Football is one place," he said, "(where) we don’t care what colour you are, where you’re from, who’s your father, if you know how to play football, you will play."
And the 62-year-old, who is yet to be formally announced as the new national coach after his appointment was approved by Safa’s NEC last week, is prepared to leave no stone unturned in his pursuit of national perfection.
Even if that means walking through the gates of South Africa’s top rugby schools to ‘introduce football’.
Speaking on eNCA’s CheckPoint Podcast, Mosimane spoke about his recently launched book, Youth Football Coaching Manual.
“As coaches we’ve been training players without a resource, without, like academics would say, a curriculum,” he said of his new book.
“I decided to write a manual so that we can unpack like academics to say, before you read you must know your alphabet, then you can read.”
Mosimane is a big admirer of what has been achieved in rugby and wants to emulate the success the sport has enjoyed in South Africa.
“If you drive around any town or city, if you drive around at the schools, you’re going to see more rugby posts than football goalposts,” he said.
“I respect rugby and I even have a Springbok shirt because that is our national team…
“You have to check how the Bokke did it, where did they start? Which schools they go to and what is the programme?”
The host, Nkepile Mabuse, then suggested that Mosimane should partner with top schools such as Paul Roos, St Alban’s College and Paarl Boys.
Mosimane knows it will not be easy.
“We have to be honest also, some of the schools here don’t want football in their schools,” he replied.
But when he was challenged to change that narrative, Mosimane did not hesitate.
“You give me a challenge, which is a good challenge,” he said.
“The minister of basic education came to my [book] launch and he said ‘coach this is needed’.
“So I think we need to now move it to another step to say, minister can you also accompany me to speak to Paul Roos, Paarl Gym and all those schools so that we can [present] the programme [to them] and lets help the children to play football - especially, we need white football players.
“We need white football players in Bafana Bafana, we need them. Why not? Why don’t we have them? They play at youth level, but they fall off along the way.
“We need to showcase them in Bafana to say ‘you can play there’.”
For Mosimane, however, this is about more than simply finding players.
He believes football has the power to bring South Africans together in a way few other things can.
“You can see it in Europe, you can see France is full of Africans. As long as you know how to play football, we’ll let you play.
“Football doesn’t choose, it doesn’t care whether you’re from a shack or not. As long as you know how to play football we’ll give you a chance.
“We don’t care about connections, we don’t care who you are…
“You are right, it’s a good challenge, a big challenge.”
For Mosimane, the challenge is no longer simply about building a better Bafana Bafana.
It is about changing the way South Africa thinks about football – from the school playground to the national team – and making sure the next generation of talent, whoever they are and wherever they come from, does not get lost along the way.
dudley.carstens@nationalmg.co.za