Dual citizenship for Bafana?
As a football loving nation, we’re probably all tired of our not so “winning loving” national teams, and I mean TEAMS, from junior to senior level, kudos to our U23s for qualifying for the 2016 Olympics though, regardless of the manner in which they did it, we should be proud. The sad part though is thinking we can gauge/quantify this part-luck achievement as an indication that our football is improving, it’s honestly not. For a nation with huge aspirations of being a powerhouse in African and world football, we sure do have the money, we have the fans, we have the stadiums but where are the players?
There’s many theories out there, some people think we should focus on development, some psychology, some on our PSL foreign quota. There is one interesting solution that has done the rounds for some time now, why does South Africa not adopt the tactic of using players from other countries who hold South African citizenship? This has worked wonders for some footballing nations, France and the USMNT come to mind. This sounds like a good idea in hindsight, it’s actually a great idea if we can find the players in question, there will as expected be politics about this, pride and patriotism, but if we can get past these issues and have the players that possess qualities that can improve our national teams, we’ll likely be a powerhouse in no time.
Unfortunately for South Africa it will be extremely hard to find these players, as hard as it is to find our own. We can use some scoring sharpness, physical prowess and mental stability that equally/less talented players from abroad seem to always edge us on. Well, there’s a few huddles to overcome to make this hybrid Bafana Bafana possible, let’s look at the stumbling blocks.
What does FIFA say about this?
In short, FIFA allows us to play players who have South African citizenship and have not represented any national team which they hold citizenship of at the senior level. Now from here we can go two routes, recruiting players abroad who hold South African citizenship or keep South African players that hold dual citizenship from playing for other countries, poaching youth players would be more successful here. As an outside bet, why don’t we send promising youth players to abroad academies at a young age? Set up a program or something.
Recruiting players abroad
Now here comes Jurgen Klinsmann, a German football legend who played for a host of clubs including Totenham Hotspur and Bayern Munich in his playing days and was appointed coach of the USA team in 2011. In the 2014 world cup he had 5 German-Americans picked for the USA team including a host of other players who held dual citizenship, from Mexico to Haiti. We all know the USA is a basketball nation, as much as we are actually a cricket and rugby nation, Klinsmann knew this and was well aware that to be successful, he would have to look for players abroad who had a better football upbringing than the average American, so he went searching and found his men, USA defeated the odds and went to the knockout stages of the tournament ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal.
A few players abroad who are eligible to play for South Africa come to mind, Ricardo Nunes, Andrew Surman and Davide Somma to name a few. Ricardo Nunes a terrific left back brought into the fold by Gordon Igesund in 2012 who plied his trade in Portugal, would have been an asset if he was scouted and called in early. Then we have Andrew Surman who has never been interested in international football, a good player who played for Southampton and now plays alongside Tokelo Rantie at Bournemouth. Davide Somma played for Leeds, a 6 foot 3 striker who South Africans had high hopes for until a serious injury disrupted his progress. How many of these players can we find if we look around? My gut tells me a handful, getting players who have been raised in academies abroad would benefit us immensely. This has not been done though, Gordon Igesund tried, even South African born players plying their trade abroad struggle to break into the team, our coaches seem to focus more on domestic players.
Poaching foreign players
There’s a fair distribution of foreign players who hold South African citizenships in our PSL, some still around and some already traded, Nyasha Mushekwi, Collins Mbesuma, Knowledge Musona and Anthony Laffor, clinical marksmen whose services our country would have used with the talented ball players Bafana Bafana have at their disoposal, we could be challenging for major continental and international accolades. A footballing nation is as good as the talent it produces, imagine if we could attract the young Musonas of this African continent and maybe go as far as South America, there’s too much unused talent there, we could use with some of it, but, why can’t we do this?. It all boils down to our inability to adequately develop players, our development structures do not allow us to attract young foreign talent. Respect to the Ajax Cape Towns of our beautiful country, what they are doing down there at Ikamva deserves all the plaudits, you duplicate this and put in enough investment, we suddenly become very attractive in foreign lands.
European teams have academies brimming with international talent and most of the promising players from these academies play for these countries of residence at youth level with many making the transition to senior teams. If South Africa had good development structures, we would attract talent from as far as North Africa, this would in turn help is in developing, exporting and keeping talent, foreign and domestic, but as we all know, we’re still some way from achieving this.
Sending youngsters abroad
As everything eventually comes down to money, there’s due diligence to be done to check the viability of investing in developing a youth development system, if the costs seem too big a risk for investment, like education, why don’t we send promising young talent on football scholarships to academies abroad? A program like this would bear ripe fruits if administered properly, the reason the USMNT are well above us in the rankings is because of this, well for them it wasn’t scholarships or anything like that. American soldiers stationed in Germany had children while in the country or in America, with German spouses, these children received dual citizenship and some 19 years later, a Bayern Munich developed Julian Green clad in the white of the USMNT became the youngest player in American history to score in a word cup.