SAFA were on the brink of announcing the Mozambique-born coach as the new Bafana Bafana boss when he bailed out on them at the last minute, with the association citing 'global Covid-19 travel issues' as the reason behind the announcement delay.
According to a reliable source, Queiroz is no longer coming because SAFA were against his wishes of bringing in his own technical team.
"We are talking about an assistant coach, goalkeeper coach, physical trainer, analyst – a full technical team, and that he must be in complete control," says the insider.
"In his first stint with Bafana, remember Jomo [Sono] was the technical director and he said, 'I'm the boss'. And then Queiroz qualified for the World Cup in Korea/Japan and he left because of that.
"Now he doesn't want to have the same situation; he doesn't want a boss; he doesn't want a technical committee; he doesn't want anything above him. How much money is going to be spent for him to bring his own full technical team?"
Contacted, SAFA head of communications Dominic Chimhavi denied the claims and instead assured that they are finalising everything with one of their candidates, who will soon be unveiled as the new coach.
"There's nothing like that. Both issues are a bit miscued in a sense that the CEO has been meeting the incoming coach. I mean, he was just tying the loose ends and we are almost there," Chimhavi tells snl24.com/kickoff.
"We'll tell you in the coming days when we'll announce the incoming coach. He is amongst the candidates the CEO was given by the technical committee.
"He [the coach] is amongst the five candidates earmarked by the technical committee. In the coming days we should be in a position to announce the new coach."