Coached by former Banyana skipper Desire Ellis, the senior women’s team has made significant strides in recent years, since the arrival of Dutch coach Vera Pauw in 2014.
Pauw initially failed in her mandate to guide the team to the 2015 Women’sWorld Cup after they ended fourth at the 2014 African Women’s Championships (now known as theAfrican Women’s Cup of Nations).
However, Jordaan kept faith in the former Scotland, Netherlands and Russia women’s national team coach as she later steered the team to the 2016 Rio Olympics – their second successive appearance at the showpiece after previously qualifying in 2012.
After failing to progress beyond the group stages of the competition, Pauw quit her job and Ellis was handed the interim reins before being made permanent coach several months later, thanks largely to her leading Banyana to the 2017 COSAFA Women’s Championship title.
The Cape Town-born coach has now achieved her mandate of qualifying for the World Cup, shortly after retaining their COSAFA crown in September.
Jordaan has since credited this progressive success to the association’s decision to empower Ellis through their vision of changing the women’s coaching structures upon the arrival of Pauw.
“We brought Vera Pauw in and made Desiree the assistant coach. Now Vera Pauw, at that stage, was one of the top three women coaches in the world,” highlighted Jordaan.
“And then we spoke to Desiree after two years, to ask her, ‘Do you think now you are ready to take over?’ And of course, she said yes, and we appointed her.
“One of the things that we said, in the past, always the women’s teams were coached by a man, and I said, no! You’re never going to find a woman coaching a men’s team.
“We must get women coaches to coach our women’s teams, so in all of our women’s teams we have local coaches and they are women, and we see the success of women.
“So, I think, and Desiree will tell you, she’s benefitted a lot and she’s ready now to take [Banyana to the World Cup], and she’s proven herself.
“We are very happy, it’s a project that worked, and we’ll see what happens now in the [AWCON] final, but she ticked the main box for us, which was to qualify for the World Cup in France next year.
He also revealed SAFA’s intention to bid for the hosting rights of the 2023 Women’s World Cup.
“We have indicated to FIFA that we are interested in hosting the next Women’s World Cup in 2023, and therefore it was important for us that our team must qualify for 2019, so that if we get to host the World Cup, it would be the second one.
“So, now we must just put our bid together and convince the world that we are ready to host the Women’s World Cup.”