Jordaan denies pullout was to save face

Gaborone - Despite pulling out of the race for the Cosafa presidency on Friday, Danny Jordaan believes he would have garnered enough votes to oust the Seychelles’ Suketu Patel.

Jordaan announced his withdrawal from the contest for the leadership of southern African football during the elective conference just prior to the voting, leaving Patel to go for a second term at the helm of the region.

Yet as he walked out of the conference centre of the Gaborone Sun flanked by Safa president Kirsten Nematandani, his campaigner Emanuel Maradas and a sympathiser from Mozambique, Jordaan spoke of how most delegates were disappointed at his decision.

“The people came to me saying I should not have pulled out,” Jordaan said. “I had 10 people who had promised to vote (for me).”

But, according to Nematandani, those promises were not solid enough and the South African delegation – that also included Safa chief executive officer Robin Petersen – decided to “withdraw our candidature”.

That he decided to pull out, said Nematandani, was because they were not sure if those votes were guaranteed and wanted to avoid embarrassment.

“Voting is a very private matter and while we had done our work and many promises (for votes) were made, but were they real? We felt it would be best if we pulled out in order to maintain our dignity. It was a case of gut-feel, we knew we still had to rely on people being honest and keeping their promises. But when we went in there we were not sure this was the case,” Nematandani explained.

Yet on a gloomy morning here on Friday, everything had pointed to a looming defeat for one of African football’s most recognisable figures.

As the delegates arrived at the conference centre, they all exchanged friendly banter with Patel before convening in little pockets.

Those that the Saturday Star spoke to alluded to a humiliation-in-waiting for Jordaan whom they described as “aloof and too focused on Europe”.

That aloofness was evident as Jordaan walked in with Botswana’s David Fani, the Safa vice-president walking past the delegates without greeting any of them.

He did greet Patel inside the hall before joining Nematandani and Petersen at their table – the two having also looked somewhat disinterested in mingling with anyone – the CEO fiddling with his laptop at the corner before going into the hall and Nematandani walking straight through to his chair.

Barry Rukoro, general secretary of Namibia, did not mince his words as to why Jordaan would have been clobbered.

“Danny threw our vote back at us a while ago when he made lots of promises to help us secure sponsorships for development projects but he never fulfilled them,” he said.

“We just cannot trust him. He made too many promises to too many people which he has not kept.

“He did well to pull out and save himself embarrassment. He would have lost 13-1 if it went to the vote.”

Rukoro said the decision to give Patel a second term is for the region’s best interest.

“He has really done a good job for Cosafa. We now own the Cosafa Under-20 Championship which used to be run by Safa, and we also have the rights for the Cosafa Senior Challenge which we will be re-launching soon. The national associations are now also taking responsibility for the right to host events. We’re moving in the right direction and Patel is steering us there.” - Saturday Star