Nyathi handed huge SAFA scouting role

SABC Sport can confirm that former Bafana Bafana defender David Nyathi has been appointed as a SAFA national team scout.

Nyathi, a member of the 1996 AFCON-winning squad, is a former youth coach at Ajax Cape Town and has helped to produce some of the top players in the country.

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Part of this introduction of national scouts will see the national team coaches receive a pool of talent from all 52 SAFA regions before working on a streamlined number of players to be included in the national setup.

SAFA Technical Committee chairperson Jack Maluleka confirmed that Nyathi will be assisted by another former player, and the pair will travel both nationally and internationally to source talent for future national team selection.

"David is the head of scouting, he's in North West. We'll also reveal another name of a former player that will be part of this scouting [network]," Maluleka revealed to SABC Sport.

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"We have the technical centre, so what we want is for the scouts to get these players on a monthly basis, maybe during the holidays, to the technical centre.

"They will be scouting all over the country, including internationally, and make sure players are coming there and they assess them, along with all the coaches, whether Banyana Banyana or Bantawana - they must be there.

"That way we'll have a pool [of players] and, as coaches, they will not be going around and instead can make sure they confine themselves to technical aspects on the field.

"That's what we want to do for the next coming term, because we don't to have coaches - if we know there's a program of COSAFA, all of a sudden within three days say, 'Let's get players'.

"Sometimes teams don't want to release players but if you know that this player has been marked or elected on this level, we have an A, B, C team... We've got all the players."

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By Velile Mnyandu