Former South Africa coach Ted Dumitru is concerned that a first-round exit for the World Cup hosts could have a negative impact on football in the country.
Dumitru is regarded as the most successful coach in the South African domestic competition, and guided the national team as an interim coach for four months until February 2006.
The national team, known locally as Bafana Bafana - or The Boys - only has one point in Group A and must beat former champion France on Tuesday to have any chance of progressing to the next stage.
``What I observed with the World Cup is that there has been a lot of excitement across the nation - people who were previously not involved or interested in football came along, sponsors, fans, and others,'' Dumitru told The Associated Press on Saturday. ``Now, I'm worried that if they see Bafana not doing well, they might say 'there is nothing in this sport, let's go back to rugby and cricket'.
``That will be a serious blow to football in this country.''
Dumitru said people wanted to be associated with success.
South Africa is a two-time World Cup champion, the Springboks having won in 1995 when it hosted the tournament for the first time in the post-apartheid era and at France in 2007. The national cricket team is consistently among the best in the world.
Rugby and cricket have high profiles in South Africa because of that success, but football is the most popular sport in the country in terms of participants.
``We need to convince people to stay in football. It has a massive following in the country,'' Dumitru said. ``We must not lose hope. We must not lose interest.''
Dumitru said despite the financial success of the domestic football competition, it is lagging the bigger leagues in terms of its playing standard.
``The style of play in the PSL is still kicking and running ... There is no creativity,'' he said. ``That is in big contrast to the leading nations.''
Brazilian coach Carlos Alberto Parreira had worked on improving cohesion and teamwork at the national level, Dumitru said, but South Africa really needed a broader player development program.
South Africa opened the tournament with a 1-1 draw against Mexico, but a 3-0 loss to Uruguay put Bafana at risk of a first-round exit.
``The expectations were raised to highly unrealistic levels. We were naive,'' Dumitru said. ``Yes, we made progress under Carlos, but we are far from a point where we can compete reasonably well against the top teams.''
