Last coach to qualify for a World Cup
It’s been 18 years since South Africa last qualified for a World Cup, and the man to do that was Queiroz. However, the Portugal-born coach never ended up taking Bafana Bafana to the finals in Korea and Japan, having vacated his position over what was reported at the time to be unhappiness at having been forced to work with Jomo Sono.
Safa had appointed Sono as a technical director, apparently following concerns over Queiroz’s leadership after South Africa had been knocked out at the quarter-final stage of the 2002 Afcon - a defeat to hosts Mali having been considered a failure. Which is somewhat ironic now after Bafana have repeatedly struggled to even qualify for Afcon finals over the past decade.