Tournament News
Parreira loving it ‘local’
2010-06-02 12:10
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Comment: Rob Houwing, Sport24 chief writer
Cape Town – Mostly South African-squeezed patriotic juices … those are the elixirs Carlos Alberto Parreira is pinning his hopes on to an ever-mounting degree as he seeks to steer Bafana Bafana beyond the first phase of the World Cup.
It is a policy quite obviously fraught with certain perils, but Parreira’s faith is not without some merit, either.
In a country where the majority of its staunchest soccer fans are best able and keen to monitor the domestic Premiership scene, rather than take significant pleasure from the often higher-paid exploits of South Africans plying their trade beyond our borders, the coach has tapped especially deeply into local resources for his 23-strong final squad for the tournament.
We knew it was coming: in early April the Brazilian guru had already firmly stated that “the biggest number of players for the World Cup squad will be from the South African league … we might have 14, 15, 16 players, it depends”.
In finalising his troops, Parreira opted for the highest end of his anticipated quota – 16 of them are on the books of PSL clubs.
Perhaps it’s no coincidence that, of the five players culled earlier this week, three of them (Benni McCarthy, Rowen Fernandez and Bryce Moon) are foreign-based.
And in his fractured-English, quirkily roundabout way, Parreira again implied as he revealed his World Cup hand that local was essentially “lekker” – even if he may not be personally familiar with that expression.
He claims that the Bafana brains trust had been following the fortunes of some 25 overseas-based players in recent months, and been lukewarm in many instances because of irregular game-time.
Still, his selection earned a rocket from at least one Bafana icon of years past, Phil Masinga, who told The Sowetan that McCarthy had been shoddily treated and that defender Nasief Morris – “he marks the likes of David Villa week-in and week-out in the tough Spanish league” – was another glaring absentee.
Of course Masinga may always be a little partial to the foreign legion, as one who played himself for Leeds United and sampled top-flight soccer life in Switzerland and Italy too.
But the defiant Parreira, heartened by the increasingly swollen gates as his side have waltzed their way through a salvo of pretty deceptive friendlies, is also delighting in the closer-to-home stadium habits of the South African populace … and most notably their blanket resorting to the controversial vuvuzela.
“Make them louder, louder, louder; we want more vuvuzelas,” he cried recently, as if on the podium of some high-spirited, emotional public gathering of the ANC Youth League.
The million-dollar unanswered question, of course, is whether the incessant din of those dastardly plastic trumpets, broadly fervent domestic support and a nucleus of men from sides in the still-uninspiring PSL like Sundowns, Chiefs and Pirates will be enough to seriously unnerve Mexico, France and Uruguay.
Considering the country’s several years of international soccer doldrums, Parreira hasn’t had many trump-cards to play.
And should Bafana flop, of course, it may well lead to an explosion anew of the debate around whether the national team should place greater emphasis on players benefiting from the street-wisdom of various superior leagues abroad.
But at least Parreira’s nailed his colours to an identifiable mast with this unashamed exploitation of the mounting tide of jingoism …