Apologies to readers of this column who cannot tell FIFA from UEFA or CAF: this week I focus on football, which the Brazilian legend known to much of the world simply as Pele famously described as “the beautiful game”.

Starting at 22:00 tonight, when Zimbabwe takes to the field against Egypt at Cairo International Stadium, it is going to be a month-long football fiesta in the North African country.

Southern African representation at the tournament is sizable, if membership of the Southern African Development Community is used to define the region. Besides Zimbabwe, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Madagascar, Namibia, South Africa and Tanzania will be battling it out with the best on the continent, hoping to lift the silverware when the final whistle is blown on the evening of July 19.

Bafana Bafana – the South African men’s senior football team – return to the biennial tournament after failing to qualify for the 2017 iteration. Bafana Bafana were actually the winners in 1996. The finesse, in the final match, of Mark Williams – who scored a brace against the fancied Tunisians – will forever remain etched on my memory. The team finished as runners-up at the next tournament, in 1998. From then on, it has been downhill for our boys (that is what Bafana Bafana means). Whereas they were number 16 in the world and the second-best in Africa in August 1996, they occupy the seventy-third spot in the latest FIFA rankings. Several African teams are above them, namely Senegal (23), Nigeria (42), the DRC (46), Ghana (49), Cameroon (54), Egypt (57), Burkina Faso (58), Mali and Côte d’Ivoire (65), Guinea (68) and Algeria (70).

I know I may sound like a prophet of doom, but, if you ask me, we are not going to experience that golden moment in 1996 this time around.

About a year ago, I gave my views on what ails South African football. I mentioned interference in couching matters by the suits at Safa House – the seat of the South African Football Association (Safa) – as one of the problems. Remember how Carlos Queiroz was ejected in 2002, despite having helped the team qualify for that year’s African Cup of Nations (Afcon) and World Cup tournaments? To the Safa hierarchy, Queiroz was incompetent, but what they did not realise is that they had not fired him, but had set him on fire – a fire that went on to burn brighter and brighter. After his dismissal, he joined English side Manchester United as assistant coach, before moving to Spain, where he served as coach at Real Madrid. Another stint as number two at Manchester United followed. He became head coach of Portugal in 2008 and has been at the helm of the Iran football team since 2011.

So, it was a huge relief when Safa president Danny Jordaan told a television journalist not so long ago that no targets had been set for the current coach, Stuart Baxter, at this year’s Afcon – a sign, perhaps, that Safa has abandoned its trigger-happy ways.

But I do not see much progress concerning the second ill that I identified about a year ago: the lack of a youth development programme. I implored Safa to take a leaf out of the Ivorians’ book. As soccer lovers will know, the Asec Mimosas Academy, in Abidjan, has churned out dozens of footballers who have gone on to achieve fame in the top leagues of Europe. Think of the likes of the Toure brothers, Koko and Yaya, Bonaventure Kalou, Didier Zokora, Emmanuel Eboue, Salomon Kalou and the fellow known simply as Gervinho – they all passed through the portals of the famous academy when they were youngsters. Little wonder Côte d’Ivoire has gone places as a footballing nation.

Should the mandarins at Safa need further evidence that it does pay to invest in youth development, they need look no further than two of the world’s greatest-ever footballers: Argentina’s Diego Maradona and Pele (he was born Edson Arantes do Nascimento). Both grew up in straitened circumstances and started playing football before the age of ten on the streets of the slums where they lived. So, Safa should be scouring Daveyton, Soshanguve, KwaMashu, Khayelitsha and other townships for raw talent that needs polishing.