Cavin Johnson on the challenges for SA football coaches

Cavin Johnson is an experienced football coach who came under the tutelage of the late Ted Dumitru, one of the Premier Soccer League’s (PSL) most respected coaches. Johnson led Platinum Stars to a second-place finish in 2012/13 in what was his first head coaching job. After leaving the club for Supersport United in 2013/14, he returned to Platinum Stars in 2015/16.

In his second tenure at Platinum Stars, he guided the team to a third-place finish after he found it languishing in the bottom-half of the table at position 10. He went on to coach two other clubs, AmaZulu and Black Leopards, after his departure from Platinum Stars in 2017.

His most recent involvement in professional football was as Pitso Mosimane’s assistant coach at Africa’s club of the decade Al Ahly in 2020/21, where he was part of a technical team that achieved much success, winning the CAF Champions League and a bronze medal at the Fifa Club World Cup, besides others.

We sat down with Johnson to hear his thoughts on the football coaching landscape in South Africa and the football culture in the PSL. This is an edited version of our conversation.

What’s your opinion on the state of football coaching in South Africa?

There are many starting points that we must look at. The first thing I always think about is the ownership of football clubs in South Africa – it is changing too often. There are quite a few clubs within the PSL that are newly owned, for example Royal AM, TS Galaxy, Marumo Gallants, Stellenbosch FC, and Cape Town City. These are all young teams that are not older than 10-years in existence in the league.

When people invest in football, a lot of them think that football is a money-making business and I don’t think you make money from football in the first five years. You should get involved in football to entertain. It’s like starting a musical band whereby you don’t hit a number one song at the first try. It’s a continuous effort and that’s how it works.

But, at the same time, you have to have a vision and people behind you who want to improve the product and not change it too often. The coach is probably the one person you want to have as stable as possible within your club. The coach should know exactly what you want from the team and implement plans to achieve those goals.

Why do SA clubs have a high turnover rate when it comes to coaches?

A lot of clubs use statistics to decide who to hire and fire. So even though they initially layout all their needs in the beginning of the season, in reality they are actually just scared of getting relegated. Local clubs are known to give coaches a set number of matches to get their desired results, for example, and if you don’t achieve that you’re gone.

There are other factors as well. The coach could be doing a fantastic job but it’s the team that goes out to play the game and they might not get the desired results. But again, this is all run with statistics and there aren’t realistic discussions taking place around how to improve the situation if the results aren’t forthcoming, and to get more backroom staff to help coaches get those results.

That also brings in other aspects like if the club has the right facilities to train on, if they are travelling in the right manner, living in the right conditions while on camp, or whether the players are satisfied. All those things need to be taken into consideration. When the team is okay around those little things, it will perform better.

From my experience, when I look at my time at Platinum Stars, we were very successful when we were there. But that’s because we had good training and playing facilities. But the players were also in a good space within Rustenburg. All those things contributed to the team’s performance on the field of play.

So a coach can’t take all the credit for everything that happens within a team. There are a lot of factors that count, including having a good backroom staff.

Some coaches cite interference as the reason they leave a club. Does this happen often?

My job as a coach is to shape the team so that it performs well and if it doesn’t perform, I have to explain the reasons behind that and come up with solutions. Wherever I have coached, I have always made it clear to club management that I don’t expect any kind of interference. But interference is something that other coaches in South Africa experience but they should nip it in the bud within their contracts. No team should interfere with what the coach plans to do on the field of play.

For a head coach, what does the ideal technical team look like?

It depends on the budget but ideally you would have an assistant coach, a goalkeeper coach, a physiotherapist, a doctor, a fitness and conditioning coach, an analyst, a scout. From a scouting perspective, the scout and the analyst will work together to scout the opposition and potential players that could come in and contribute to your team. From a medical point of view, you would need a medical doctor, physiotherapist, and fitness and conditioning coach who would work together to ensure that you have enough players to field for every match. 

And on the technical side, your assistant coach and goalkeeper coach are there to help you understand what type of players you have, and what kind of football you are going to play. You might go into a team that plays long ball football but you are a coach that prefers to put the ball on the floor. Your assistant coaches are there to guide you as far as that is concerned.

There are a lot of managerial aspects that you as the head coach might not be able to speak to, such as properly managing all 35 players in a squad, but your backroom staff will be able to segment them so that they are able to help them individually with aspects such as their physicality, mental wellbeing, and tactical preparedness ahead of matches.

Should SA be adopting technological advancements more rapidly?

I think some of these aspects are very superficial. Nothing can ever replace the feel of a game. No new technology can teach you that and this is something we learn as kids playing soccer in the streets. As a coach, when you physically see how a player runs, how he holds the ball, and the kind of decisions they make – that part of the game cannot be replaced by technology. I subscribe to the idea that if I can’t smell my players or look into their eyes, then I don’t know who they are or what they are capable of doing. Yes, technology is important but if you don’t have the feel of your players, then you don’t really know them.

What does SA football need to do to conform to the modern demands of the game?

Firstly, every club in the PSL should have training facilities that look like Kaizer Chiefs’. Their facilities in Naturena are probably one of the nicest that any club can have right now. Those are investments that club owners must make in order to belong to the PSL. Secondly, each club should have a home ground and all clubs must be guaranteed that they will stay in the football fraternity for at least 10 years.

For example, when you have a team like Bloemfontein Celtic being sold, that team should not be allowed to move outside of Bloemfontein for at least 10 years. It was a sad day for South African football when Bloemfontein Celtic was sold [relocated and renamed], and as a result, that particular region no longer has a professional football footprint.

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How have football club sales affected South African-based footballers?

I can tell you that from a coach’s perspective, going to Bloemfontein was probably one of the best games you would ever play. You would always be guaranteed that you would play in a packed football stadium. The same goes for the sale of Bidvest Wits. This was one of the most competitive teams in the league and the decision to sell them after almost 100 years in existence shouldn’t have been allowed to happen.

Those clubs represented important history in local football that has just been thrown in the bin and now no one is going to talk about Bidvest Wits and Bloemfontein Celtic for a very long time. The lack of football history is affecting the younger generation negatively as they don’t seem to have much of an appetite for local football and prefer to look towards European football and that should not be happening.

Any closing words?

The bigger teams should be more intentional about bringing back the competitive edge within local football. Teams that have a good crop of supporters such as Kaizer Chiefs, Orlando Pirates, Mamelodi Sundowns, and Maritzburg United, need to go back to the olden ways of actually dividing the supporters. Put the Pirates supporters on one side and the Sundowns supporters on one side when they play each other. This approach of mixing supporters in the stadium is killing the game. This is a culture that is unique to South Africa and that uniqueness is not helping the game to progress.

During the Soweto derby, which should feel like a rivalry, you have over 80,000 Chiefs and Pirates fans sitting together having a beer. Growing up, when I used to watch the Soweto derby, it felt like a real rivalry that was cut down the middle: you would see black and white on one side, and gold and black on the other side. I have seen Sundowns recently trying to separate fans at their matches, but they need to be consistent. That level of competitiveness among the fans will ultimately infiltrate the players on the field and make matches more exciting.

This story was edited on 4 July to update editorial style. No material changes were made.