SAFA’s technical director Neil Tovey has revealed that Stuart Baxter will not be dismissed from his job as national team coach despite his failure to lead the team to the 2018 World Cup finals.

Bafana failed to qualify of the international spectacle again after being defeated 2-0 by Senegal last month. When quizzed about Baxter’s future as coach of Bafana, Tovey highlighted that his mandate wasn’t to qualify for the World Cup.

‘That wasn’t his mandate … he’s only been in this job for seven months,’ he told Times Live.

‘Should we keep replacing the coach? You’re the same people [the media] that were criticising Safa on how many coaches we’ve had over the years. We selected him [Baxter] for a reason.

‘Sometimes we have to look at players. He doesn’t kick the ball. It doesn’t mean the strategies were wrong. You can’t go beat Nigeria in Nigeria and suddenly become a bad team. You’ve got to look at the players. Are they giving enough?”

‘You know it’s always easy to point fingers at the coach. But those players have to start pointing fingers at themselves. They really have to get a big awakening because they’ve got so much potential. But they need to get their heads right and need to wake up,’ he added.

Tovey suggested that despite the technical committee not being happy about Bafana’s failure to qualify, they are content with the former SuperSport United mentor staying on as coach.

‘We are obviously unhappy about not qualifying and he’s not happy as a coach.

‘But that was never a question on whether he’s going to stay or not. Our meeting was all about what were the pitfalls? What went wrong? How can we correct them?”

‘So where did we go wrong? You have to look at the mentality of the players. Have we got the right players?”

‘He must keep the solid foundation and discard those he thinks failed to do the job for him in the qualifiers.

‘I can’t talk names because I’m not talking from a coach’s perspective,’ he concluded.

Photo: Samuel Shivambu/BackpagePix