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Sono to step down as S. Africa coach Posted: Wednesday July 03, 2002 2:55 PMJOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -- Jomo Sono will resign as coach of South Africa on Thursday when he meets officials to plot the future of the country's soccer team, he said on Wednesday. But South Africa's World Cup coach is to stay in his position as head of the technical committee at the South African Football Association, effectively overseeing all the country's national sides. Sono said he would recommend that assistant Trott Moloto and under-23 coach Ephraim "Shakes" Mashaba be appointed to replace him. Sono, who took over from the Portuguese Carlos Queiroz in March, steered South Africa to their first ever win at the World Cup finals, a 1-0 victory over Slovenia in Daegu last month. But he has also been criticized for his lack of tactical knowledge and planning at the Korea/Japan tournament in which South Africa failed to progress to the second round. He said his appointment for the World Cup finals was always intended to be temporary and that running his own club in the South African premier league meant he could not manage the national side on a permanent basis. Sono has owned his own team, Jomo Cosmos, since 1983 and coached them since 1995. He also has business interests outside of soccer. The 46-year-old has had two spells in charge of the South African "Bafana Bafana" national side. In 1998, he was caretaker coach when they reached the final of the African Nations Cup in Burkina Faso. Sono said he intended overseeing the national side, an arrangement first introduced in February and which Queiroz refused to accept, leading to the resignation of the former Portugal coach just months before the World Cup finals. Moloto, 45, was South Africa's coach from October 1998 to September 2000, winning more than half of his 33 matches in charge and taking the team to third place in the 2000 African Nations Cup finals in Ghana and Nigeria. But following public clamor for a high-profile foreign coach, Moloto was downgraded to assistant when Queiroz took over. Mashaba, 51, coached the South African under-23 side at the Sydney Olympic Games two years ago, where they upset Brazil in the opening round group. Moloto and Mashaba are expected to take charge when South Africa host Madagascar in their quarterfinal of the Cosafa Castle Cup in Port Elizabeth on July 21.
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. |
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