Pay Before Play (Iraq Is About To Attack)

[Originally posted on Friday, June 12, 2009 at 1:23pm]

We’re all lucky to be in this country right about now; well at least we should be. The soccer fever is finally catching up to more and more people. It took a while to kick in (pun intended), but the whole buzz around the FIFA World Cup is turning into a reality day-by-day. You’ll notice it from everything that surrounds us; adverts, the mascot, TV promotions, news media coverage, and who could forget the damn road constructions! And now with the Confederations Cup starting in two days, expectations continue to grow higher now as (literally) the whole world has its eye on South Africa. Call it nerve-wrecking scrutiny if you may, but only good will come out of the football extravaganza. Now that everything’s in place, I didn’t know whether to be shocked, worried or both when I recently found out that our soccer team (out of all people) aren’t as prepared as we thought they were for the first game of the Confed Cup this Sunday.

If you don’t know by now which team we’re playing this Sunday, then you deserve a slap to your face; nonetheless, I reckon SAFA deserved a kick to the nuts when members of our squad revealed this past Monday that they didn’t know shit about the Iraq team. I was like ‘What the fuck?’. Here I am listening to striker Bernard Parker say shit like “Uhm…we don’t know jack about the Iraqi soccer team...we’ll probably see a tape of them in action sometime this week…”. Are you serious? Sometime this week? Even though the game is on Sunday? They should’ve did their research on the Iraqi team last year for crying out loud. Usually when teams are about to engage in critical matches the team staff makes sure that thorough research on the opposing team is made before-hand. I imagine it being like those war movies where the Commander would draw out strategies on a still projector; or how Jamie Foxx would study tapes of Ray Charles before he actually played the character for that movie ‘Ray’. Before I blow my horn any further, I’d like to admit that I’m not sure who we should blame for that. Is it coach Joel (Dipset) Santana’s fault? A lot of people would agree to that one. I’ve known that professional coaches have the power to prepare players as they may, no matter which sport it is. Remember that scandal that surrounded the training methods of our then Springbok coach? I can’t remember it in detail at the moment (since it happened like 6 years ago) but he had some training campaign that had our rugby squad players running around nude in a swamp; like they in the military or some shit. In his defense, he claimed it was to empower discipline and diligence amongst the players, lol. I never got to find out if he got fired when they found out, but knowing how coaches always receive bitter/sweet appreciation, I would’nt be surprised. Why do you think the coach always gets the blame when the team loses? As far as I’m concerned, being a professional coach must be a kaak job, even if the team wins. Remember when our rugby team won the world cup in 2007? Coach Jake White was fired right after that. The South African Rugby Association was probably like “Thanks for making our team the world champions, but you’re fired”, lol. The exact same thing happened two weeks ago to the Moroka Swallows coach after they won the Nedbank Cup.

But back to my initial point, South Africa being the host of both the Confed Cup and World Cup means that our team should be the most prepared of all! That and the fact that we’re ranked number seventy-friggin-something in the FIFA team rankings. When I thought I’d heard enough from our soccer team, I pick up the paper on Wednesday to read that the Bafana Bafana players were threatening to boycott the Confed campaign if they don’t get paid their bonuses before the competition. R34 million to be exact. Again I was like ‘What the fuck?!’. Basically these guys were demanding to get paid 34 milli in bonuses for a game they haven’t competed in, let alone won. As you’d imagine, SAFA bit back at the players by saying “Go to hell!”. They told the players to shut up and accept only R14 million, or they’ll all get fired. Now that’s some gangsta shit right there, lol. I did a bit of research and found out that this wasn’t the first time that our players bitched about money. They apparently threatened to hold a strike back in 2006 during the African Cup of Nations in Egypt. And you guessed right, they didn’t win that cup either. As for our game on Sunday? I honestly think we'll win it though.

The relationship between sport and money is beginning to lean to one side. Back then, sportsmen played for the passion and love. Nowadays, it’s become 99.9% about the money. A part of me doesn’t blame our soccer players, their human too. They’re also citizens of this country. They also witness the money-hungry power struggles in the government and politics overall. They probably thinking ‘Hey, we want a piece of that big cake without doing that much work too’.

God bless our soccer team.

PS. Did y’all see the Proteas last night? We the best!!