Ntseki keen for extensive scouting network

by Staff Reporter

Tuesday Oct 22, 2019. 14:00

South Africa coach Molefi Ntseki says it is imperative the national football association sets up a scouting network for him at home and abroad to make sure the right players are being selected for Bafana Bafana.

South Africa do not have many players active in the top leagues in Europe, but a number who are competing week in, week out in the likes of the France, the English Championship, Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark.

“The plan is to have a scouting team locally and another one that will help us with scouting international players. The plan is to have an analyst who will be able to give us the clips of the players abroad and those playing in South Africa,” Ntseki told reporters.

“That way, when we do our analyses and profiling of the players we are bringing into the setup, we know which areas of their game still need some improvement and which areas of their game that will be of help to us.”

Ntseki says he does not want to select unknown overseas-based players that he has not real knowledge of, only to find out they do not quite fit the bill when they turn up for camp.

“Somebody asked me a question the other day on radio and said ‘coach, what do you do with players coming from overseas. Do you give them two caps and all of a sudden, we don’t see him again?’ My answer to that question was the scouting team will do it right,” he said.

“It is not going to be about me as a coach. It will be profiling that will be presented to us to say a ‘Dean Furman’, for example, has got the qualities to add value to the national team even though he is playing overseas.

“It is not going to be about me saying I want Dean Furman to come and then I give him two caps and all of a sudden, I don’t feel like he is the right player for the team. Or another coach comes in and he feels that no, Dean is not a player for him.”

South Africa are next in action at the start of the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers, where they will travel to Ghana and host Sudan next month.

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