Being held to a draw by a country with a population of some 70 000 is disturbing enough but Bafana’s bleak stalemate with tiny Andorra on Thursday is even more worrisome in the way it highlighted just how limited the depth of the South African national team is.
Coach Hugo Broos put out a second string against the small European principality, whose record in competitive football is dismal and whose draw against South Africa must rate as their biggest success in the international arena, certainly in terms of the size of their opponent.
Even if Andorra have decades of experience in competitive football against top-class European countries and have pulled off a rare win here and there and the occasional narrow loss to a leading footballing power, they have no business holding South Africa’s second stringers to a draw. It shouldn’t be the case, either, if Broos was playing his third or fourth or even fifth-choice selection.
So, while there is much embarrassment to overcome, more concerning is just how thin Bafana’s resources are. The team against Andorra was woeful, even if dominant, and it keeps up an alarming trend that we saw at the Africa Cup of Nations finals, where none of the substitutes used in the tournament in the Ivory Coast made any impact off the bench.
Take out the Mamelodi Sundowns core and Bafana look threadbare.
Broos’s irrational decision to place a criterion on player selection in terms of an age limit has cut down on his options, but there is also a real dearth of decent talent emerging at this time.
These troughs do occur from time to time and the current drought also has much to do with the lack of success at junior level, where South Africa are not qualifying for events like the Under-20 or Under-17 World Cups.
This is because the South African Football Association does not put the right resources in place to ensure a conveyor belt of talent. The coaches of the junior national teams are part-timers with no security of tenure or productive mandate, never mind the resources to develop their teams.
The fabled Vision 2020... or was it 2026?… that Safa crowed about years ago turned out to be what we all thought it would be… a lot of hot air.
That is now even more evident when a country of more than 60 million people cannot beat tiny Andorra.