Safa could have spent the $10m on a million soccer balls, 700 000 pairs of boots, about 30 000 training equipment kits and 16 000 complete team kits.
|||More than a million soccer balls, 700 000 pairs of boots, about 30 000 training equipment kits and 16 000 complete team kits.
This is what the $10 million (R125m) at the centre of controversy around the 2010 Fifa World Cup Legacy Fund could buy for thousands of development soccer teams in South Africa.
According to calculations and extrapolations done by the Dreamfields Project – an organisation that has been equipping youth soccer teams in South Africa since 2007 – R125m would provide muchneeded soccer equipment for “thousands” of development teams.
A breakdown of the funds show that at least 16 000 development teams would benefit with complete soccer kits, which include a full set of shirts, shorts and socks, complete with numbers and logos. It would also be enough to provide for 34 286 training equipment kits which include agility hurdles, soccer bibs, marker cones and practice balls.
On Sunday, South African Football Association (Safa) president Danny Jordaan revealed that the organising committee had made a payment from its World Cup Legacy Fund as a contribution towards the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football’s (Concacaf) development fund.
The revelations from Jordaan came amid claims that South Africa’s football governing body had paid a bribe to secure 2010 cup hosting rights.
However, Safa denied the allegations, claiming the money paid was an above-board donation to support the building of a football centre for people in the African diaspora – specifically in the Caribbean.
World Cup analyst Nikolaus Eberl said he had been surprised to learn Safa had donated money to the Concacaf development fund when South Africa could have used the funding to boost their own soccer development.
“Clearly there is a massive need to develop soccer in South Africa at a youth level and you would think that every dollar counts,” Eberl told Saturday Star.
He added that when Jordaan had taken over as president of Safa, he stressed the need to improve the development of local soccer.
“When he was elected president, Jordaan said that the Safa executive would serve South African football,” said Eberl.
“He spoke in-depth about the need for a change of structure, and said the challenge for Safa would be to develop and reconstruct South African football.”
Eberl also bemoaned the fact that Safa had “wasted” money from the World Cup Legacy Fund.
Originally intended to amount to $100m (now R1.2 billion), the legacy fund ended up as $80m, with $10m going towards the building of Safa House, with the other $10m going towards the alleged donation to the Concacaf development fund.
“South Africa benefited mostly from the new infrastructure, such as the Gautrain, upgrading the roads and airports and secondly in terms of tourism, which has seen a significant increase in incoming numbers since 2010,” said Eberl.
“Unfortunately the nation-building legacy has been wasted and the football development legacy could have been so much greater had the monies been channelled and allocated differently.”
Eberl, who has analysed several World Cups, including the 2010 spectacle in South Africa, said it was a “great shame that South Africa is now being implicated in the Fifa scandal”.
“Safa needs to come clean and own up to the $10m transaction.
“After all, authorisation for the money transfer was given on a Safa letterhead signed by then president Molefi Olifant,” he said.
“The longer the allegations drag on, the worse the implications for South Africa’s brand image will become, especially in the wake of the neverending Nkandla scandal.” - Saturday Star
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