Safa might have yet to roll out VAR — either on a pilot or long-term basis — but they haven’t been resting on their laurels, as they’ve confirmed that they are consulting with the best minds in the Cosafa region to train their referees for the system.
From Friday, Safa began a two-day induction workshop with Fifa for the recently elected National Executive Committee (NEC) and senior management in Sandton. The workshop is expected to cover several agenda items.
Included among those items was seeking Fifa's permission to engage with the Cosafa refereeing department, led by Felix Tangawarima, to help train Safa referees using their VAR systems.
Tangawarima, who is already responsible for training eight of Safa's 90 officials for the system, has since agreed to be on board. However, Safa chief executive Lydia Monyepao has admitted that they could have engaged with Tangawarima earlier.
“Yes, you are right — if we had consulted him earlier, maybe if we had done that in early 2024 or 2025, we would have had our 90 referees trained by now,” Monyepao said.
“We thought about it and said: ‘What is Cosafa doing that we can learn from and implement in our football ecosystem?’” Monyepao added. “We engaged them and asked that they take us through this thing.”
Having outlined that Safa had a three-year plan comprising a R50 million budget, the training of referees was slated for the second year, as the R20 million funding issued by the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture (DSAC) was meant for year one — specifically for the procurement of VAR systems.
However, Safa decided not to wait, opting to take the training of referees upon themselves in the interim. They initially held in-house training courses before consulting Tangawarima and his team for further expertise.
“As the administration, we were tasked to see what it is that Cosafa is doing that could assist us in fast-tracking the training of our referees. That’s when we took the decision to send Mr Chad Soo (Safa's IT Manager) to the CAF Women’s Champions League qualifiers in Gaborone, as well as the U-20 Men’s Championship in Mozambique,” Monyepao said.
“This was done so that he could spend time there and liaise with the VAR Cosafa team under the leadership of Mr Felix, assess what it is that they are doing, identify where the gaps are in what we are doing, and take this forward.”