Goodbye Santana

For until realising his job was in danger, the coach had tinkered little, showing next-to-no tactical flexibility as he stuck to a defensive approach while making few substitutions.

SHOOT: South Africa is currently ranked 84th in the world, and are hoping to host the FIFA World Cup. That's like Jamaica hosting the winter Olympics, or Morocco hosting world swimming championships.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk On the face of it, Joel Santana's long-expected ousting as South Africa coach on Monday was a cut-and-dried affair. The 2010 World Cup hosts have lost eight of their last nine games, culminating in last week's embarrassing defeat to lowly Iceland. Their current Fifa ranking of 85th is their lowest since 1994, which was just two years after South Africa's re-entry into global football. And with no World Cup hosts having ever failed to get past the group stages, there were more worrying statistics as well. In the last nine games, just one player has actually scored for Bafana Bafana, Mamelodi Sundowns striker Katlego Mphela having netted four times. For two of Santana's most controversial decisions were to axe Blackburn Rovers' Benni McCarthy and Spain-based Nasief Morris from the Confederations Cup for disciplinary reasons.