South African football woes continue j.mp/10qc4xI Start treating Bafana Bafana as a business asset – avoid Brazil 2014 June 17, 2013 by Marc Ashton For the Bafana Bafana brand to blossom, they should be avoiding the 2014 World Cup in Brazil like the plague. Loopholes are great, but they are not going to help develop the game in the long run. Don’t get me wrong, I’m nearly always behind the national football team and in fact had money on them winning yesterday, but we now need to take a more structured approach to the team if we are serious about building it. Earlier today, EWN ran an interesting Twitter poll asking their followers whether South Africa should be given a second opportunity if Ethiopia is found guilty of breaking the rules, and a couple of interesting tweets stood out for me: Mxolisi Mvumvu: “NO never!! They didn’t earn a place to Brazil, since France ’98 we’ve only qualified for 2010 by virtue of hosting” Big Chief Eug Sigwa: “The Bafana brand is already at ICU stage. They are hoping for different results with the same approach.” Kgorotswi Maunatlala: “No second chance, they need to pay their debts & allow deserving teams to progress, No boardroom decisions. We have to learn” I am nothing more than an armchair supporter and I can’t argue much around the merits of Gordon Igesund versus Pitso Mosimane as coaches but I do believe that common-sense in South African football is often overshadowed by a poor understanding of economics… or possibly just greed. How often have we overpaid coaches and had nothing to show for it? Why is the junior club system in South Africa in shambles? Why are the financials at the South African Football Association (SAFA) constantly in the spotlight? As a starting point, go back and read this opinion piece from Jeremy Sampson the Chief Executive of Interbrand Sampson. He wrote this back in 2004 and spoke about how important it was to protect the Bafana Bafana brand and make sure that we stopped focusing on trying to milk a cash-cow. He emphasised back then that it was a brand we should look after and nurture, not simply let it lurch from one crisis to the next. The takeaway quote for me was this: “We live in a world where sport is big business, which means involving serious business people, not simply sport fundis. Another truism in life today is that in business, government or sport, perception is valued as much as performance and profit.” I find big-brand sports success fascinating and I went to read the “Chairman’s Viewpoint” from Kaizer Motaung at Kaizer Chiefs following on the success they enjoyed this year. As a business person protecting his brand and a passionate football figure: I found this excerpt particularly telling: At the beginning of each season, we gather in our review and strategic planning workshops to map, plan and strategize our way forward in a process that ultimately determine our goals that are anchored by a specific theme. This time around we expressed a wish to win the league and claim at least some of the cup competitions on offer. We also set to reach out to our supporters through activities that consolidated their presence and pulling power. We subsequently embraced “Reclaiming the Glory” as an overarching theme for the 2012/13 season. Ensuing debates gave us more heartache with management arguing that the theme may pose a huge pressure on the Technical Team and the players at large. The Marketing and Supporters Departments on the other hand insisted that the theme carried a prophetic message that had credence to naturally motivate not only the team but the entire Kaizer Chiefs family that included supporters, business partners and officials. Hindsight is a perfect science and you can wax lyrical when you have had a good season, but the language that Motaung uses is the kind that talks about protecting a brand for all stakeholders. There is a lesson there. Since that fateful day in 1998 when Pierre Issa conceded an own-goal against France in the World Cup opener up until yesterday when Bernard Parker managed to score for both teams and – in theory eject us from the 2014 competition – the Bafana Bafana brand has been under assault. We now need to consolidate as a country, treat the national football team as a billion rand asset and get all stakeholders behind it again. The ordinary football fan does not expect us to win a World Cup in 2014 or 2018. What they do expect is that the integrity of the brand is maintained. That’s the goal we should be aiming for.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:56:29 +0000
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