The 40-year-old believes the South Africa shirt has lost some of its value with Safa failing to put up strong structures
Tyren Arendse has openly criticised South Africa Football Association for making it easy for players to join the national team Bafana Bafana.
The 40-year-old midfielder, who featured for Santos FC, Mamelodi Sundowns, and Orlando Pirates in the PSL, believes getting into the Bafana Bafana squad is becoming one of the easiest things compared to during his playing time.
He has further put the blame on Safa for lacking structures and proper planning, something that has led to many changes occurring in the squad selection.
“The national team is a tricky situation and I just feel like in the last few years it has been too easy for people to get national team caps. There is no more value in getting that call-up,” said Arendse as quoted by Citizen.co.za.
“Yes, it’s a special moment for a player, but I think Safa has made it too easy for people to get into the national team because there is no structure, there is no plan. It’s sad, and obviously, the difficult thing again is that our players are not playing in top leagues.”
Arendse further believes lacking South African players plying their trades in top leagues in Europe had also contributed to the move adding that it has proven hard for Bafana to compete with the best in Africa.
“Before we used to have players playing in England, players playing in Spain and Germany that we could call up. Nowadays we don’t have that,” Arendse continued.
“As players, we have to challenge ourselves to get into those top leagues if we want to compete with the likes of Ghana, Senegal, and Nigeria. Because we will never be able to compete with them if we don’t have many players playing in top leagues.
“Your Ghanaians and those other top African national teams have their players competing in better leagues. No disrespect to the Scandinavian leagues – your Sweden, Norway, and others, but we can’t compete against the best if we don’t have players who are playing in the best leagues.
“Once Safa has a plan and a proper structure then we can probably see where we are going.”
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