Johannesburg - The President of the South African Football Association (Safa), Kirsten Nematandani, has apologised to the nation for Bafana Bafana's failure to qualify for the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon).
"On behalf of Safa, I would like to take this opportunity to unreservedly apologise to the entire nation for the failure by Bafana Bafana to qualify for the Afcon finals scheduled for Equatorial Guinea and Gabon early next year."
A Confederation of African Football (CAF) ruling eliminated Bafana, despite finishing on top of Group G on goal difference based on article 37.5 interpretations of the regulations.
CAF invoked rule 14.1, which states that in case of equality of points between two or more teams after all the group matches, a greater number of points obtained in the matches between the concerned teams will determine the group winner.
Nematandani said the celebration by Bafana players after the match against Sierra Leone, thinking that they had qualified for the 2012 Afcon finals, left the entire nation devastated and mourning.
He further said the association believed that given the available resources and talent in South Africa, Bafana's failure was inexcusable.
"As the president of the association, I would like to own up and say we are profoundly sorry for letting the nation down," he said while briefing reporters at Safa House in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
This is the second consecutive time Bafana has failed to qualify for the Afcon finals following the Angola 2010 disappointment. Nematandani said they would endeavour to ensure that this does not happen again.
However, Nematandani said the failure by Bafana's technical team to acquaint themselves with CAF rules was unacceptable.
"We will look into our internal structures to make sure people are held accountable and that such glaring errors are not repeated in future."
Throughout the briefing, the Safa president kept apologising to the soccer loving nation.
"Once more, I would like to pledge to the people of this rainbow nation that we will do our utmost to ensure that we restore national pride within our national team.
"We sincerely regret letting the nation down and would again request the nation to forgive us for the trouble we put them through. We will rise again and make the nation proud."
Safa CEO Robin Petersen apologised on behalf of Bafana head coach Pitso Mosimane.
"The coach has asked me to apologise to the nation on his behalf for the failure of the team to qualify. We've accepted his apology to the association and have undertaken to give him the support he needs to build Bafana into a winning team."
As part of corrective measures, Petersen said they had already begun a process of internal engagement regarding the mistakes that were made. In due course, appropriate action will be taken where necessary.
"We are currently analysing our existing systems, structures, roles and responsibility matrices as well as our operational checklists to ascertain why things went wrong and to ensure that something like this can never happen again."
Regarding their appeal to CAF, Petersen said: "We've decided that the best way to address this situation is to withdraw our appeal and will not pursue any other legal route that might have been open to us."
However, he said they would submit their concerns around Rule 14 to CAF and ask them to address this at an appropriate forum.
"From the beginning, we've asserted the purpose of our intention to appeal was not to seek to challenge the results of the qualifying matches or to find a legal 'back-door' deal into the finals.
"We've primarily sought to assert and show that Rule 14 should be reviewed and altered in the future to prevent such situations from happening again."
