There is more than meets the eye to safa’s $7m Acon bonus for Bafana Bafana.
I KNEW from the moment it was announced that there was more to the bonus agreement between Bafana Bafana and the South Africa Football Association (Safa).
It wasn’t the usual press conference with media attending, instead everyone went off a tweet and a statement that said “confidential between management and players”.
I read all kinds of reports that literally said the same thing, ‘Bafana players will get $7 million (R131m) if they win Afcon’.
However, a quick look at the Caf press release about the increased prize money for the 2023 edition, set to kick off next week in the Ivory Coast, confirmed my suspicions.
Winner
It reads: “The winner of the TotalEnergies Afcon Cote d’Ivoire 2023 will receive $7,000,000.”
Nothing’s ever straightforward when it comes to Safa and money.
Their financial issues are well documented, so I was surprised nobody had a report that asked for clarity or an explanation.
That’s not how we roll here at Diski Business, so I took it upon myself to find out and vice-captain Percy Tau’s explanation filled some of the blanks.
He says: “I don’t think the money was the only issue, there were other issues that we had to sort out.
Focus
“We’re happy everything was sorted out and now we just want to focus on football.”
We had to end the press session with Tau before I could follow up and ask what some of these “other issues” were.
Safa leadership arrived conveniently after the media session, led by president Danny Jordaan, with Safa Cape Town and NEC member Bennett Bailey as well as Safa CEO Lydia Monyepao alongside him.
We couldn’t ask them questions and I was told that “the media day is over” as I was approaching Bailey and Jordaan who were seated under a shadow.
I instead requested a moment with the Safa CT president to get a picture with him and the Cape ouens Jayden Adams, Mihlali Mayambela and Oswin Appollis and I obviously sneaked in a few questions while we were walking to the players.
During our walk, I got to better understand that there is much more than just paying bonuses, but he obviously couldn’t share the specific details otherwise he would be “betraying the players’ trust”.
The players just wanted their basic expectations met without any drama.
After all, it’s been the same story for senior national team since their first-ever appearance at Afcon back in 1996.
I’ll let you guess who was there as part of Bafana’s management team.
Aargh, I’ll tell you, Bra Danny!
The players need to be saluted for their understanding of the football body’s situation.
They didn’t push for the usual bonus structure of guarantees as they progress in the tournament, which means they get nothing from the participation fee.
That’s not to say Safa won’t pull a Safa on us, so let’s not get too excited until we know the exact details.
Account
The “7 million” story did the rounds the whole of Sunday with nothing more added besides what Safa wrote on their X (Twitter) account.
Only on Monday did we get clarity that the money won’t be coming from Safa’s coffers but it’s the winning prize money from Caf that the players will share.
It’s a pretty handsome sum of 40 percent more than the previous $5m, while the runner-up will now get $4m, which is also more than the $2,75m from the previous edition.
Meanwhile, each of the two semi-finalists will receive $2.5m while each of the four quarter-finalist, $1.3m each.
The last four received $2.2m and the last eight took home $1.175m at the previous edition.
