SAFA should get the Bafana Bafana thing right this time .

Our national soccer team will not improve if every time we are looking for a quick fix.

Hell, we can bring in World Cup-winning German coach Joachim Löw tomorrow and we will still not win even the Africa Cup of Nations next year.

The solution is in football development.

As long as we ignore that, we will be reduced to a nation of palookas when it comes to soccer.

We do not have to look outside our borders for examples.

The Bafana Bafana team that won the Africa Cup of Nations in 1996 did not start by winning. They were once called four-by-fours because of the losing margins they suffered over four years.

The difference was that the same players were retained and allowed to develop as a team.

Also, we had the Transnet School of Excellence that groomed future stars.

It seems that Safa never took any lessons from that experience, because since 1996 we have chopped and changed the squad of players and coaches at an alarming rate - all in pursuit of a quick fix.

We have bright football minds in Farouk Khan, Ephraim "Shakes" Mashaba, Steve Komphela and Pitso Mosimane who can form our football think tank, yet we are still looking for a foreign messiah to win us the next tournament.