Richards Bay co-coach, Vasili Manousakis gives his FIFA World Cup prediction, and also his opinion on the zero PSL representation at the showpiece taking place in Qatar.
The former AmaZulu assistant coach also formed part of the history-making Usuthu side that ended second behind Mamelodi Sundowns, with a well decorated technical team, which included Head Coach Benni McCarthy, assistant coach Siyabonga Nomvethe and Goalkeeper coach Moeneeb Josephs. Not forgetting also managing to get through the challenging preliminaries of the CAF Champions League, and ended third in the group stages, narrowly missing the knock-out rounds.
“ The World Cup is going to be fire, there are so many unbelievable teams,” Vasili Manousakis told ThisIsFootball.Africa.
“When I think of it off the top of my head, you see Brazil’s squad, they’ve got an incredible team. Something inside me is saying Argentina, they got some great players, they look a well-balanced team. You know you can never right off the Germans or Spain even though defensively I’m not so sure. Then France, they have won it before and know how to win it, know how to change gears from the next 16. If I have to make a quick prediction, then I’d say Argentina could do something special.”
Manousakis then went into addressing the lack of representation from the PSL, and highlighted some key factors in terms of why we are firstly not there, and if we are able to attract the best players outside of our borders.
“ I actually don’t know what to say, we have one of the best leagues in Africa, we have unbelievable facilities that came out of hosting the 2010 FIFA World Cup,” continued the former Cape Town City assistant coach, Manousakis.
“Sometimes we have excellent foreigners, but do we have the best? I don’t think so, because the best usually end up in North Africa where the money is big. If I look back and if I can say this, I asked myself, have we as a nation done enough for our youngsters. From hosting the World Cup and the money we made from it, contributions from FIFA and everything else, sponsorships, have we done enough at this stage where we could have more players in the Qatar World Cup, and now I’m speaking only about South Africa.
Then from that I say we haven’t done enough. But it’s not good to see that we have zero players competing at the World Cup. How can we say our league is up there? However, I still think our league is up there. Hopefully this changes in the next couple years but we must do more for the youngsters.”
