Kaizer Chiefs and Mamelodi Sundowns legend Brian Baloyi has warned of a Bafana Bafana crisis after joining Spanish club Espanyol.
The 48-year-old will serve as the head goalkeeper coach at the La Liga club's satellite academy in South Africa, where they are looking to unearth local talent.
“I’ve always wanted to have a goalkeeping academy – I spoke about this whilst I was still playing, we had plans with [former Chiefs goalkeeper coach] Rainer Dinkelacker, even before moving to Sundowns,” Baloyi told SABC Sport.
“[The plan was] that one day we wanted to build a goalkeeper academy in South Africa. Even when I had just moved [from Chiefs] to Sundowns, we had meetings with him, Itu [Khune], Thela Ngobeni, and we wanted to start something.
“By that time, it wasn’t the right time, and right now I’ve just joined Espanyol – we’re launching Espanyol – the academy, in South Africa, and I’ve just joined them as the head goalkeeper coach."
The former South Africa international, who was part of the Bafana Bafana squads at the 1997 and 2009 Fifa Confederations Cup tournaments and 1998 World Cup finals, divulged that they will be holding trials soon.
“In the next two weeks we have goalkeeper trials and the academy itself has trials again at St Stithians [College] in Sandton," he said.
“But we’re looking at launching a fully functional training in mid-June, [and] before the end of June we want to be up and running.”
The man nicknamed Spiderman also stated that there is a goalkeeping crisis in the country with the national team having relied on Chiefs captain Itumeleng Khune as Bafana's first-choice keeper for many years.
“We have a crisis, a challenge when it comes to goalkeeping and I think for many years we’ve had an over-reliance on Itu, and that has come back to bite us,” he added.
“Also, most of the guys that were his age and were always understudy to him never had much experience in playing for Bafana and it’s a lot of things I could point [out] that are contributing to this problem.”
SuperSport United star Ronwen Williams is currently serving as Bafana's captain and first-choice keeper having accumulated 27 caps thus far.