Chiefs supremo slams Safa

2005-10-27 22:06

Johannesburg - In a scathing attack on South African soccer's administrators, both past and present, Kaizer Chiefs supremo Kaizer Motaung has called for a wholesale change at Safa - "from the top downwards."

Commenting in the club's official magazine, Motaung claimed that even if Brazilian coaching legend Carlos Alberto Parreira was brought to South Africa to take charge of Bafana Bafana it would make "little difference" in terms of results.

"The first step is to bring about a drastic change within Safa," said the Chiefs chairperson.

"It would make little sense to have the best coach in the world if there is a systems failure within the national association and an administration structure that cannot support him."

Motaung also had scathing words for the architects of the controversial Pickard Commission, which he said was specifically designed to drive the late former president of Safa, Solomon "Stix" Morewa, out of soccer and destroy his remarkable achievements as an administrator.

"This evil phenomenon emerged when Stix was riding on a crest of a wave after Bafana won the African Nations Cup," added the Motaung who is also Chiefs' managing-director, "and he had laid the foundation for South Africa to eventually earn the right to stage the World Cup.

"While Morewa was demonised and made a fall-guy," added Motaung, "others who worked in conjunction with him were allowed to go unscathed and have since been heaped with the plaudits that rightly belonged to him.

"Essentially, the less said about the Pickard Commission and its bitter, jealous architects the better. What it achieved was to remove from South African soccer one of its greatest administrators."

Motaung has also recently been outspoken in his criticsm of the PSL administration of which he is chairperson of the Finance Committee, indicting, in particular, CEO Trevor Phillips and Prosecutor Zola Majavu - and querying the "silence" of chairperson Irvin Khoza to take a lead when it was required.

- SAPA