The coaches argue the mother body has rebuffed all efforts for a meeting after concerns the BFA did not follow due process in appointing the South African. However, the BFA has batted away concerns from the local coaches, maintaining the appointment was done above board. The coaches had raised issues with the manner of Ramoreboli's hiring, arguing procedure had been flouted.
However, BFA chief executive officer, Mfolo Mfolo, has denied the accusations. "Yes, we did (follow procedure). Recruitment is varied. There are amongst many others, internal and external, throwing a wide web of recruitment... head hunting which is exclusive and targeted or a combination of both," Mfolo said in a recent interview. He said the local coaches association had not made a formal engagement with the BFA over the issue. "I am not privy to their official concerns save to what I saw and heard on social media," Mfolo said. He said they do not necessarily consult the coaches association over national team technical appointments. "We do not necessarily consult but we can inform them as they are our associate partners. The decision as to who is employed rests with the association," he said. But BCA secretary-general, Boniface Lekaba, said they have made attempts to meet with the BFA to no avail. "Our association has done everything you can think of to engage the BFA and all was and still is in vain. We even thought of engaging some high-profile personnel, in their capacities at BFA and all we got was a middle finger," Lekaba said. "We wrote letters, about three, to the association and not even a call to appreciate the communications. Never before or in the past has the BFA engaged us on anything. Lately, the new administration made promises to engage us and we became hopeful but I am sorry to report ... o hoo ke hano." Lekaba said their message regarding the Zebras coach was "misunderstood and misinterpreted".
"Some, especially on social media deliberately chose to distort the message. Probably we had limited platforms to drive the message home. Generally, we are not a reading nation, that is we normally don't read the whole document to understand but we easily get struck or destructed by some words in what we are reading and (we) react. Most of the time, we react wrongly and miss the core message," Lekaba said. Their concern was over how Ramoreboli was appointed, and not necessarily do to with nationality. Ramoboreboli was appointed on a two-year deal at the end of last month, with a target, amongst others, to win this year's COSAFA Cup and progress beyond the group stages of the Africa Cup of Nations finals in Morocco. The Zebras were drawn in the same group as Senegal, Democratic Republic of Congo and Benin.
In addition, the former Jwaneng Galaxy coach was asked to get at least 12 points in the 2026 World Cup qualifiers, where the Zebras already have six points from four matches. One of his targets is also to take the Zebras to the top 30 in the Africa rankings, improving from the current number 41. "I would not be here if I was not ready to reach those targets. It is not going to be easy. I know that there are some that we are not going to achieve. As a human being, I think I will also be honest and come back and say we failed because of this and that and we achieved because of this and that. But the bigger picture is to make sure that we do our best and we achieve greater things," Ramoreboli said during a press conference, where he was presented to the media at the end of January.
