Pitso Mosimane replaces Carlos Alberto Parreira
Four-year deal for Pitso
Posted: 2010-07-15 19:01
Pitso Mosimane has been confirmed as the new coach of Bafana Bafana after being unveiled at a media briefing in Johannesburg on Thursday.
The former Bafana assistant coach has signed a four-year deal that sees him tasked with qualifying the country for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
Mosimane had already been named as the only candidate for the job earlier this month by the South African Football Association, but his contract still had to be negotiated.
The 45-year-old replaces the Brazilian Carlos Alberto Parreira, under whom he had worked over the last four years. His appointment keeps a promise the football association made to appoint a local to the job once the 2010 World Cup was out of the way.
“I feel extremely privileged to be filing Carlos Alberto Parreira’s shoes. I thank both the football association and Parreira for having confidence in me and I know I’m the right person for the job,” he told reporters.
Mosimane’s first task will be to try and qualify South Africa for the 2012 African Nations Cup finals. The qualifying campaign begins in September with a home game against Niger, but a much more difficult assignment against African champions Egypt, who are in the same group, awaits him early next year.
South Africa’s side have shown a major improvement in form over the last six months, and on Wednesday jumped 17 places in the latest FIFA rankings. But they did not manage to exceed expectations at the World Cup and were eliminated after just three matches, becoming in the process the first host nation to fail to get past the first round.
Mosimane had a previous spell as South Africa's caretaker coach, winning three, drawing three and losing just one of the seven matches for which he was in charge.
He is a former striker who won three caps for the country and played for several leading South African clubs before leaving for Greece, where he played at Ionikos for six years, and brief stints in Belgium and Qatar before retiring.
South Africa has had 15 different coaches in the last 18 years since returning from a long-standing FIFA ban.
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