DOES SOUTH AFRICAN FOOTBALL DEVELOP TALENT FOR THE NATIONAL TEAM?

Does South Africa develop young players for the national team or for club football? Perhaps this is one of the complex topics is South African football. Over the last few years we have seen great improvement of competent young players in the PSL but absence of young players in the national team. With the exception of Rivaldo Coetzee, we need more young talent to run in the national team.

AFCON 2017 has taught us that young players represent the nation with fierce motivation to hold up their national flags. Ghana, Cameroon, Egypt and Ivory Coast came to AFCON with fairly inexperienced young players but all the above mentioned teams went on to the last eight and last four and Cameroon won the tournament.

South Africa was absent from the tournament but one could ask if we went to the tournament who will be part of the squad? Perhaps the problem of young players in the national team lies with national scouts not being present at local games. The national first division is overlooked when it comes to scouting young talent to represent the country. Few players from the NFD have represented South Africa and it should not be that way as statistics show us most young players are in the NFD and that is perhaps where Bafana should look at in terms of balancing the age and talent in the national team. This is a prayer as Bafana does not have a coach yet, that the next coach should not look at PSL only for players but SA football starts from the dusty streets and all the way up to the PSL.