Cash Incentives for Bafana Bafana Bafana

An aside, up front. I am adding a Bafana to the name of the South Africa national soccer team. I mentioned this before. The theory being if Bafana Bafana is good, Bafana Bafana Bafana is better. I believe this should be embraced by everyone in South Africa. It's already redundant; let's take it to the next level.

(I also believe England should be known as the Four Lions. Why not?)

Speaking of embracing ... South Africa's national federation has come up with cash incentive plan for its team. Not that it is taking on any massive risk here.

Here is the plan:

One million rand for the team for each goal scored.

Well, let's break that down a bit.

--One million rand is ... $132,000. Less than a million of anything might sound like. And divided 23 ways (the number of players on a World Cup team), that comes to about $5,600 per man.

--South Africa has had enormous trouble scoring goals for the past two years. In the B-cubed's last 34 matches, it managed only 32 goals. Not quite one per game. At that rate -- and can we predict many more goals against world-class competition? -- that's three goals in Group A play, which is $392,000. Big deal.

--If South Africa actually starts scoring goals and gets to the second round, or even deeper, the team pays for itself with additional monies to the federation from the Fifa kitty. Add in the intangibles in terms of marketing and increased interest in the national side ... and again, it becomes a self-funding concept.

Also note that the South African federation has yet to indicate how much it will pay individuals for making the team and playing, etc.

I do like that they are offering goal money to the team and not just to the individual who scores. This emphasizes playing together.

What will be interesting in coming days is to see how much some of the other federations are going to pay its players, and what sort of bonus systems they will put in place. Read more!