IN WHAT OTHER COUNTRY WOULD people deliberately set out to undermine the national coach and risk its World Cup hopes? The question has been asked repeatedly as the fallout from the “fake sheikh” saga guaranteed Sven-Göran Eriksson’s departure in the summer. And the answer is South Africa.
Forget the News of the World and bogus headgear. Stuart Baxter’s reign in charge of the nation that will host the 2010 World Cup is a torrid tale of tapped phones, doctored photographs and racial slurs. Now undergoing what he terms “mental rehab” in charge of Vissel Kobe in Japan, the former England Under-19 coach said: “There was too much poison.”
It did not take long for Baxter to understand why, when he was offered the South Africa job in 2004, Carlos Queiroz, the Manchester United assistant manager, had warned him: “If you can put food on the table, don’t take it.”
Having failed to win in his past nine games, Baxter stepped down in December, punch-drunk from the politics and intrigue. Despite a crumbling infrastructure and chaotic governing body, the Englishman enjoyed initial success. Under his leadership, South Africa opened a three-point lead at the top of their World Cup qualifying group, only to let that slip in their last three games. By that point, Baxter knew that this job really was a poisoned chalice.
“Some people did not like the colour of my skin,” he said. “The stories started in one newspaper where they superimposed my picture on a photograph of members of a religious sect. Then they said I was racist and every black journalist started believing it. The poison spread. I said it was libellous, but was told not to bother because the case would take seven years.
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“It’s similar to what has happened to Sven. There are people who just want to push through their own agendas and don’t care if the team goes down the toilet. They don’t realise the assassination of a coach has an effect on the players.”
Baxter, who knows Eriksson from his days as a player in Sweden as well as his work at the FA, said that he received calls from within the South African FA telling him which players to pick. “When they realised I wouldn’t do what they wanted, they turned against me,” he said. “It’s all about power.”
Against such a confused backdrop, he found it hard to trust. People told him certain players had drink problems to make him pick others with whom they were financially involved. By the end, he thinks his phone was bugged. The words of Queiroz, who left South Africa in 2002 amid talk of a conspiracy and with a newspaper accusing him of racism, resonated.
The succession has been a shambles. Ted Dumitru, a Romanian known as “The Professor”, knew that, whatever happened in the African Cup of Nations, he would be out of a job next month. “I can confirm that Ted will not be coaching Bafana Bafana (the South Africa team) after the tournament,” Raymond Hack, the SAFA chief executive, said, his vote of no-confidence delivered with unseemly haste. Dumitru’s attempts to state his case have involved putting the captaincy to a vote, prompting the retirement of Aaron Mokoena, the captain, and asking the nation to pray.
“One of the problems is they think they are much better than they really are,” Baxter said. “I suspect they will go for a Brazilian coach because they think the world champions are the only ones above them. It is the same at club level. Ask a Kaizer Chiefs fan how they would do against Juventus and they’d say they’d win 3-0. The trouble is there is nothing there. They will upgrade the facilities for the World Cup, but there is no system for identifying decent kids, no coach education, no technical director, no development programme, one centre of excellence built 15 years ago that’s crumbling. I wasn’t allowed to take the players to a training camp in Portugal even though it was in the budget.”
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It is a fascinating portrait of a country that will hold the World Cup in four years’ time. Baxter believes that such political infighting is not exclusive to South Africa, which is why talk of an African nation winning the World Cup is premature. “You get nations who have a good crop of players, like Nigeria, South Africa, Cameroon and Senegal, but none turn that into sustained success,” he said. “Now it’s the Ivory Coast’s turn. I think the World Cup will be a success because South Africa is a fabulous country and the Government will get behind it, but I think it will be hard for the national side to do well while there is so much interference.”
Baxter, whose father, Bill, toured South Africa with Wolverhampton Wanderers in the 1950s, might have known it would be tough when he read a newspaper headline the day after his appointment. “Just who is this palooka?” was how it marked the arrival of an eleventh coach in 12 years. Last April, an editorial in the Mail & Guardian was more revealing. Speaking of a whispering campaign by club owners and agents disgruntled because their players were not in the team and, hence, shop window, it said: “Should the long-term interests of South Africa’s national game be sacrificed on the altar of short-term personal enrichment?”
It has been a grim fortnight in Soho Square, but as he contemplates a life after England, Eriksson may consider the tale of his old friend and conclude that it could have been worse.