Weekend news reports in various South African newspapers suggest that Bafana Bafana coach Carlos Alberto Parreira could be leaving his post as coach of the South African national team and be heading back to his native Brazil as he wishes to be with his family and in particular his wife Leila Parreira who has taken ill in recent times.

The Brazilian coach's future with Bafana Bafana will become clear later on Monday when the South African Football Association hold a press briefing after a Safa executive meeting, which is set to clarify and possibly confirm that Parreira will be vacating his seat as Bafana Bafana coach.

Amakhosi midfielder Siphiwe Tshabalala, who has regularly featured in the Bafana Bafana team under Parreira’s tenure has described the possible departure of the wryly Brazilian tactician as a major set back for the 1996 CAF Africa Cup of Nations Champions.

Restart

A somewhat disconsolate Tshabalala said to kaizerchiefs.com on Monday morning that news of Parreira leaving had concerned him, and given the progress the national team has made under his guise having the thought of losing the FIFA World Cup winning coach was a worrying prospect.

Tshabalala said: "Carlos Alberto Parreira is a highly experienced and well traveled coach, he has used his past experiences to help the national team improve a lot. I have really enjoyed working under his leadership over the past year or so, should he go it will be back to the drawing board for us again. A lot of progress has been made by the national team under him and should he leave it will mean that we will need to kick start the building process once again."

Going forward

Tshabalala, who was injured when Parreira first took the reigns as national team coach at the start of 2007, had managed to work his way back into favour with the Brazilian mentor and was part of the South African team that traveled earlier this year to the 2008 MTN CAF Africa Cup of Nations in Ghana.

Bafana also recently recorded back-to-back wins over Zimbabwe and Paraguay in friendly matches with Tshabalala scoring his first goal at international level in a 3-0 win over the Paraguayans.

According to him that was a significant victory for Bafana Bafana saying "after the Paraguay match there was this feeling in the team that we had managed to over come a number of obstacle that had been hampering us and the road ahead was looking good. Life and football is unpredictable and many things happen which changes your course, should he leave my hope is that I get to feature in the new coaches plans and will give him my full support and carry on giving the best for my country."