South African football great Lucas Radebe doesn’t blame coaches dissociating themselves from the Bafana Bafana head coach role to avoid tarnishing their reputations.

The South African Football Association (Safa) are still searching for Stuart Baxter’s successor after the former national team coach resigned from his post last month.

However, U17 head coach Molefi Ntseki has since been appointed interim coach and recently named his 23-man squad for their upcoming friendly against Zambia next month.

Radebe insists that Safa will set coaches up to fail if they do not give the head coach the right support of the management and players, while stating that the most important objective for Safa is the coach’s success.

‘To be honest, I don’t blame them. I think for me, you set yourself up for failure and people have reputations to keep and worked hard for where they are,’ Radebe told Sport24.

‘It’s more important to stay in a job where you got the support of the management and players. Where you get to work with them week in and week out, which I think creates a great bond.

‘The success of the coaches is the most important thing at Safa. If the structure is right, we’ll see the success. We’ve got the talent but why are we not successful?’

The former Leeds United captain believes that in order to succeed, a change needs to be made within the Safa structure as they having been developing their own coaches.

‘For me, we’ve changed the coaches, we’ve changed the players … there’s only one place there needs to be change and that is upstairs,’ he added.

‘We’ve always spoken about developing our own coaches, which we have. The sad part is not giving the resources that they need in terms of support … It has to start upstairs, where they support us [coaches], where they are given the right resources that will get you what we’ve been dreaming of, which is participation not only on the African continent but on the world stage.’