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The South African national team has hired Pitso Mosimane as its new manager after Brazilian Carlos Alberto Parreira resigned following this summer’s World Cup where the host nation was eliminated in the first round.

Mosimane becomes the 16th manager for South Africa in the past 18 years, so he’s not really going somewhere there’s a lot of job security. However, Mosimane’s already been there a few years as he was Parreira’s assistant. The South African Football Association made the announcement on July 15th in Johannesburg.

Before he was taken on to help out Parreira he managed local team Supersport United and played for Ionikos in Greece for six years. He also played for South African clubs Jomo Cosmos and Mamelodi Sundowns.

However, the subject of the story here is really Parreria not Mosimane, as Ricardo Teixeira, the president of the Brazilian Confederation of Soccer, said just two days after Parreria was let go that he wants him as the new manager of the Brazilian national team.  Teixeira added that he’d give Parreria an official contract offer by the end of July.

Now it’s possible that Parreria and Teixeira had already worked out a deal beforehand and that’s why he left South Africa, but the announcement by Teixeira has surprised quite a few people, especially down in Brazil. This is mainly because some other names were being tossed around, such as Vanderlei Luxemburgo, Luis Felipe Scolari, and Mano Menezes.

It’s been reported that Teixeira thinks Parreira could be the best man for the job as he’s already familiar with the system and he’s now available since leaving South Africa. The other guys are under contract as Menezes is the manager of Corinthians at the moment and Luxemburgo working at Atletico-MG, while Scolari is on the payroll at Palmeiras.  However, Scolari could also be a favourite as he has managed Brazil before and won the World Cup with them in 2002 in South Korea/Japan.

Parreira managed the team from 1991 to 1994 and won the World Cup in America in 94. He came back eight years later and managed them from 2002 to 2006, but left after getting knocked out of the tournament in the quarterfinals Germany.

The decision might be made pretty soon though as Brazil has a friendly scheduled for August 10 against the USA in New Jersey.

But if it’s Parreria or Scolari, won’t the team be taking a step backwards instead of forwards as it’ll just be recycling the same old managers over and over again?