It has been announced that the contract of national soccer team coach Gordon Igesund will not be renewed after August. To my mind, this is a big mistake and it is not too late to reverse the decision. Igesund should stay.

I found the comments of South African Football Association (Safa) president Danny Jordaan to be completely ridiculous. Safa maintains that Igesund did not deliver on his contract. Jordaan is reported as saying: “The contract set out the targets to be achieved: the Africa Cup of Nations semis and the World Cup qualification.” This is nuts!

How on earth can you put the qualification to a soccer tournament into a contract? I was totally horrified, a short while ago, to discover that, for the Bafana Bafana tour to Australia and New Zealand, some players appeared to fake injuries so that they did not have to go. Good grief!

It should be every soccer player’s total dream to play for the national side. A Bafana soccer player with a broken leg should be taping iron rods to his leg to pretend that his leg is not broken to get to go on a national tour and to play for the national side – not the other way round.

I read in The New Age newspaper that a predominance of citizens-in-the-street were of the opinion that Igesund should stay, and that players need to be axed and disciplined instead.

Clearly these soccer enthusiasts see it my way. For example Mandla Maseko said: “Igesund is a good coach – it’s the players that need to be disciplined. Maybe, if their salaries were decreased, it would make them perform better.”

Changing coaches is not the answer and soccer enthusiast Lindela Nkabinde sees it my way. He said: “Gordon Igesund is a good coach – he should not be changed. Changing coaches won’t solve anything. Let’s give him and the players a chance.”

It was interesting to see players faking injuries and dropping out of the tour to Australia and New Zealand in such numbers that Igesund had to essentially pick a ‘B-team’ to go on tour.

I was then of the opinion that the B-team would perform better than the ‘A-team’. I believe that the results show that opinion to be correct. I think many people thought that Bafana would get hammered in Australia and New Zealand. To my mind, they performed really well to achieve a 1-1 draw with Australia and 0-0 with New Zealand.

A coach does not stand a chance if he has a team that does not want to play. They will just not achieve the cohesion which is required for the whole unit to operate as a team. Remember that the word of importance is ‘team’. So the B-team, no doubt, had a much better team spirit than the A-team and so had a better chance of performing the way a team should.

If Jordaan and the Safa crew want to show their displeasure, then they should deal with the individuals in the team. It is, however, pointless disciplining someone who fakes an injury. The remedy is simple: just ban that person for life from ever playing for the national side.

If we, as a country, cannot engender a national spirit in the national soccer team, then it is the fault of the population, which really means the fault of Jordaan and Safa, for not creating a national spirit of respect and pride.

Safa needs to create an image and atmosphere so that it is such a great honour to play for the national side that any player will do anything to get into the side. Money is not the answer. The answer is pride.

Talking of money – a foreign coach is also not the answer. To my mind, the extremely well-paid foreign coaches that we had before were a total disaster. You cannot buy success. A coach should also have major pride in being the national coach.

Why would someone like the coach who is now guiding the Iranian team at the World Cup want to come to South Africa to coach a team which could not even qualify? I think the only answer would be to pay him so much that he cannot refuse.

No, that is wrong! A national coach needs to be South African – he needs to have huge pride in coaching fellow South Africans to victory. Everybody has to operate on pride (not money) to achieve success.

Igesund has the pride, so bring him back. Safa must get the team pride in place so that the coach has something valuable to work with.