Pitso Mosimane troubled by shortage of white players in PSL

SA’s most successful coach, Pitso Mosimane, is worried about the lack of white players in the Premier Soccer League (PSL) and Bafana Bafana.

SA football history is littered with names of legendary white players such as Stuart Lilley, Jimmy “Brixton Tower” Joubert, Peta Bala’c, Phil Venter, Frank “Jingles” Pereira, John Salter, Mark Anderson, Noel Cousins, Gordon Igesund and Lawrence Chelin.

The Bafana side that won the 1996 Africa Cup of Nations on home soil included key white players such as Mark Fish, captain Neil Tovey and Eric Tinkler. In the 2000s Bradley Carnell, Matthew Booth and Dean Furman were key national team performers.

Each decade, though, the presence of white players in PSL teams and consequently Bafana has decreased noticeably.

The shortage of white talent concerns Mosimane, the coach of Egyptian giants Al Ahly.

“In the schools the white boys are playing football. Why are white boys not playing football in the PSL?” the coach asked.

“But there’s so many white boys playing football. My son is 13 and he’s playing against talented white players. I asked myself why we do not have them in the [senior] teams.

“What is the problem? We need to investigate that. We need to check on those things.

“I am trying to change things. I am not trying to say that I will be successful but I will try — and if you are doing the right things, you are bound to be successful. The white boys are playing in those schools. They must come through the system.”

Last month, the former Mamelodi Sundowns and SuperSport United coach launched his Pitso Mosimane Soccer Schools project where he aims to develop a football programme that will have a holistic approach to developing young players on and off the field of play.

Mosimane said the project is a way to give back to the profession that has given him so much.