Brazilian Piper Set to Call SA Soccer Tune

You know the old saw – “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” This will hopefully not apply, however, to the next four years of South African soccer, which is about to welcome Brazilian Carlos Alberto Parreira into its hot-and-cold clutches, if various rumors swirling in the local media can be credited.

What the monsignors who run the local game urgently need is someone who can tell them to go jump in a lake – and Parreira, who has won the World Cup before (but who could only manage the quarterfinals this year, with what was surely the world’s most talented side), is one of the few individuals on planet Earth with the reputation to make our uniquely corrupt and incompetent football dictatorship, SAFA, cleave to the standards of corporate governance required for success on the international stage. Parreira can show them his middle finger and still keep his job.

I personally would have wished for Luis Felipe “Big Phil” Scolari to have turned his thoughts to coaching South Africa, but given what he has done for Portugal, he was hardly going to be allowed to leave. If SAFA manage to sign Parreira, however – there is still, it must be kept in mind, every possibility of their screwing up the deal – we can still look forward to a decidedly higher standard of footie tango in the years to come. Note to the monsignors: just take your morning chocolate and keep your mouths shut!