SAFA Make Major Announcement – iDiski Times

The South African Football Association (SAFA) have announced the launch of the SAFA Academy, which has been named after legendary Bafana Bafana coach Clive Barker.

The Clive Barker Academy will mainly focus on different levels of coach education, as SAFA officials confirmed on Thursday.

Barker has cemented his name into South Africa’s football history books after becoming the first and to date only coach to lead Bafana to a continental trophy after lifting the 1996 Africa Cup of Nations.

Sadly, Barker passed away in June after a long battle with illness but he will now be honoured with the SAFA Academy being launched in his name.

“We are here to announce that we’re launching the Clive Barker Academy,” stated SAFA Technical Committee chair Jack Maluleka.

“When we talk about Clive Barker, all of us go back, he was the coach of Bafana that won the AFCON.

“Also, I’m happy because the women have created new history, we talk about Banyana, who have won AFCON and also the performance in the World Cup.”

SAFA Technical Director confirmed that the academy will focus on coach education and introduce various new courses to improve South African football as a whole.

“Courses that will deal with a Technical Director Course, courses that will deal with player transition programmes for ex-players, courses that will also deal with coaching courses for active players will also be part of it,” Steenbok stated.

“Performance analysis, data analysis and also, courses that will also deal with match analysis for tv pundits – we see a lot of our ex-players on tv and we want to train them.

“The Clive Barker Academy will cover a whole lot of that.”

Steenbok also revealed that SAFA will finally host CAF A and CAF B Licence courses again.

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The Clive Barker Academy will be funded with the help of the following partners:

Story by Lorenz Kohler & David Kappel.