Goodbye Carlos, hello Santana

There are 721 days before the 2010 World Cup kicks off. And Joel Santana will constantly be checking his watch. The Brazilian mentor will have a lot to deal with while he tries to whip a notoriously underachieving squad into place – not least the wrath of the media who have already labled him Mr.Nobody.

Filling Carlos Alberto Parreira’s shoes will be a tough task. The man has lifted a World Cup and the press just love using the ‘world cup winning mentor’ description (it has a nice ring to it). And they love to hate the new guy, the international rookie, the guy who is most noted for saving Vasco da Gama from relegation (and that doesn’t sound too catchy).

The powers-that-be will be gunning for a scapegoat should Bafana Bafana fail in their upcoming quest to qualify for the African Nations Cup in Angola and I can guarantee every defeat before the World Cup will be labelled as a disaster.

And unfortunately, Santana set himself up for the tongue-lashings. “Once I get to your country I want to work before I go around doing press conferences. Then the people can judge me, once they’ve seen what I can do.”

While he can be assured there will be a plethora of people who will be happy to dissect the faults of what he can’t do, there will be many more who will judge him on criteria that are totally irrelevant to football.

Clive Barker is one such judge. Santana has not officially began his Bafana tenure, (he starts on May 12), but the Amazulu boss has already predicted the worst.

“That (Santana’s appointment) was not a good decision for our football.” And why was it not a good decision according to Mr.. Barker? Purely because of the 59-year-old’s nationality.

“That was so unfair on our local coaches. The hard part for local coaches is that the president of SAFA is a South African and the players are also South African. But their coach isn’t,” continued Barker.

As the most successful coach in South African football history, Barker may feel he has the right to question Santana’s appointment.

But he should know better. The foreigner versus local debate is getting old, boring and it smacks of Makhenkesi Stofile’s ridiculous plan to nationalise Bafana. Furthermore, the last thing the country needs is to find yet another coach prior to the World Cup.

And overtly biting the hand that will feed the football nation is sure to deliver such a catastrophe.

He is Brazilian – well anyone who has heard of the beautiful game will tell you a Brazilian is not such a bad thing.

He is defence minded – again, not all bad. Look at Jose Mourniho’s record-breaking Chelsea team and success is what you will see.

And everyone is banging on about the fact that the Flamengo boss cannot speak English – well half the Bafana squad doesn’t either and neither could Parreira in the beginning.

The problem is Parreira arrived with a weight of expectation. Naive football fans believed if he had won the World Cup once (with a pretty impressive Brazil team – mind you), he could do it again and bring football success home.

The difference with Santana is the media expects him to fail. Most local coaches expect him to fail. And painfully most supporters expect the same…

However, being the underdog is not such a bad thing as Greece’s EURO 2004 side or the Senegal side that toppled France in the 2006 World Cup will tell you.

Santana needs to adequately silence the critics (that should solve some of the language barrier issues) and attain some measure of success on home soil.

I, for one am hoping that the man is as talented as his namesake, Carlos Santana, the guy his new boss Raymond Hack keeps getting him confused with.

The truth is that the structure Santana will head up, is the same one Parreira commanded. There is still good old Pitso Mosimane to help him find his way and as Mr. Hack said: “Carlos will put him in the picture and fill him in on what is around the corner.”

As the old adage goes – be happy with what you have – and the Rio de Janeiro-born man is what we have been given.

721 days. There’s no time to be bitter or nag. Let’s just get on with it!

Melissa Reddy

This article is from www.football365.co.za, the voice of the African football fan.