Should have expected more

Am I the only one to think that beating a 10-man France who had already had one foot on the plane to fly out last night is no big deal!?

I'm reading media reports about how Bafana Bafana "went out a high" and how "teary" coach Parreira is about leaving this post and how Aaron Mokoena is "not disheartened" by the performance of the national squad and I am just shaking my head trying to understand what the hell people are smoking.

"Going out on a high" is James Small in 1995 tackling a 120kgs of Jonah Lomu into touch and saying "I will not under ANY fucking circumstances let you think you are getting into this game or getting by me".

It is Graeme Smith walking out with his injured hand and hardly able to hold his cricket bat against the Australians to save the third test match.

From the 60th minute of the game yesterday, the game belonged to the French. They were the ones making the running while we ran out of ideas.

Make no mistake, this is one of the most expensively co-ordinated World Cup campaigns of all time and SAFA will be paying for it for years to come. I think it was the Mail & Guardian who ran a story not so long ago saying that the SAFA bank accounts are bare and were heavily dependant on some unpaid sponsorship contracts.

As for the captain of the side not being disheartened.... maybe this is the problem. Nobody was disheartened when we couldn't buy a win against African opposition in the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers either. Maybe if we took these things a little more personally we would have more "gees" to win....

What the hell is wrong with Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates?!

I don’t follow South African football much. I pinned my flag to Sundowns a few years back simply to be different but I don’t follow the teams and players particularly closely.

Today the two “powerhouses” of South African soccer – Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates – went head to head for the third time in the season and again produced a goal-less draw. Pirates then missed their first three penalty attempts after extra time while Chiefs sunk theirs, putting Chiefs into the final.

Apparently that is 300 minutes of soccer where these two teams have failed to score against one another.

In the league this year Chiefs finished third, six points off the log leader Supersport while Pirates finished in fifth place with a goal difference of just eight. In fact – of the top 11 sides, Pirates scored the fewest goals.

What the hell is up with these two teams? They are supposed to be the crown jewels of South African football and one would have thought that would involve scoring goals and entertaining their massive supporter bases?

Is football a mainstream sport in South Africa?

This is probably a bit of a facetious post but one of the discussions that came up in one of our office debates earlier in the week is whether or not football was actually a mainstream sport in South Africa.

There is no question that it is one of the more popular sports in South Africa, but does that make it a mainstream sport?

My definition of mainstream is a sport where we are:

A) Competitive internationally (EG cricket, rugby, wheelchair basketball, swimming etc)
B) We have amateur administrative structures in place to see the sport flourish

Despite all the money that has been thrown at football we have rarely been classified as internationally competitive. We have had a couple of players go on to do good things in English premiership and a couple of the major international leagues but they are few and far between.

The standard of the local football league (in my humble opinion) seems to be relatively low and the attendances at a lot of these games are poor considering the size of the supposed soccer base.

Many local fans would go out of their way to spend on supporting international (premiership) teams but don't rush to buy their Jomo Cosmos or Mamelodi Sundowns shirt.

Dunno?

SA soccer - weekend predictions

The big South African soccer for the weekend is the derby clash between Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs. I have put 2-0 down on a win for Chiefs and money down on Kaizer Motaung Jnr. as the first goal-scorer.

I think it is important that the South African football gets a bit of coverage and airtime and it was good to see the Friday papers talking up the super sports weekend ahead of us.

My predictions:

• Orlando Pirates vs. Kaizer Chiefs - Chiefs to win 2-0
• Maritzburg Utd vs. Free State Stars - Draw
• Platinum Stars vs. Swallows - Draw
• Wits vs. Supersport United - Supersport to win 2-1
• Sundowns vs. Cosmos - Sundowns to win 2-0
• Amazulu vs. Santos - Santos to win
• Bloem Celtic vs. Black Aces - Celtic to win
• Ajax CT vs Arrows - Ajax to win.

I wasn't mugged today

Two weeks back, a much publicised article by Louise Taylor appeared in the online version of the Guardian under the title: “Why going to South Africa for the World Cup terrifies me”

She took some airy stats and promptly trashed our country suggesting that either Egypt or Morocco was a better destination for the World Cup to be staged.

I am not going to give the article any credence with a link but I was impressed by was the number of comments from both South Africans and international visitors highlighting why the article was a load of drivel.

Read the rest of my article here and give me your thoughts....

What has SA soccer achieved?

From the Sports Mongrel blog

I don't mean to be an ultra-SA-pessimist but the question has to be asked - what exactly has South African soccer achieved in the last 5 years?

This was the question going through my mind after the 0-0 draw with Iraq on Sunday evening.

Sponsors have poured an absolute bucket-load into player development, coaches, improving league standards etc and all the while the average ranking of South Africa in global terms has gone down. If I remember correctly we are now ranked 72nd in the world.

That is disappointing considering that in terms of rand invested per player, we must be one of the highest on the continent.

The African countries ranked above us at this moment in time according to the Fifa rankings at the start of June are:

• Cameroon (21)
• Nigeria (30)
• Ghana (36)
• Ivory Coast (38)
• Egypt (40)
• Gabon (48)
• Burkina Faso (50)
• Tunisia (51)
• Guinea (53)
• Mali (54)
• Morocco (55)
• Gambia (65)
• Algeria (66)
• Uganda (67)
• Togo (68)
• Libya (69)

If I understand the rankings correctly then we need to bear in mind that apart from Nigeria and Cameroon, we've played far tougher opposition than many of these other teams so our rankings might suffer a bit.

Can I pinpoint why we don't succeed? Nope.

We have money, we have players, we have (in many cases) world class administrators who have put us in front of the world with match-ups against the worlds best.

Is it our coaches? Aaaahh now this is a question that begs to be asked. Phillipe Troussier and Carlos Alberto Parreira are some of the biggest names in world football. Joel Santana was hand-picked by Parreira (who one must assumes knows what he was doing).

Go back in history and see who SA's most successful coaches were - Clive Barker and Jomo Sono - two South African guys with limited international know-how but an ability to gel with their local players.

Personally I think it could be a more fundamental problem - South African football has no real strategy. We talk a big game with big ambitions but if you zero in on it - we don't really have an overall strategy for SA soccer in terms of where we want to be and no accountability in terms of achieving it.

To me it is mind-boggling that we can't qualify for the African Nations Cup?! But there doesn't seem to have been repercussions for those in charge or being paid to perform on the field. You can rebuild as much as you like, I get the sense that South Africa is simply trying to shoot too high with the wrong resources.

If a decent plan isn't in place then we need to accept that perhaps its better we pour money into BMX or tennis or even lawn-darts rather than overspending on soccer.

A giant is born

I picked up this news article off the Kaizer Chiefs website and thought it made for an intriguing read for anybody who wanted to know a bit of the history of one of South Africa's greatest football clubs:

“Kaizer XI Run Riot”, this is how the headlines screamed in The World newspaper the following Monday after Kaizer’s boys had routed the Transvaal Coloured Professional Invitation XI 4-0 (on Saturday) and the District Invitation XI 9-1 (on Sunday). Not an elegant headline, an attention grabber that captured the essence of it all.

After these two games, there was no turning back for the Club. For the next 38 years such headlines became synonymous with Kaizer Chiefs. Chiefs entered the game not only with the bang but elegance as well. There is no contradiction in Kaizer Motaung’ statement, “We changed the face of the game,” He is not presumptuous either!

Chiefs have made several firsts in local football more than any other club. The first team to have more full time professional players, the first team to have several players campaigning abroad at the same time (Shaka Ngcobo, Ace Ntsoelengoe, Pele Blaschke were all campaigning in the US at the same time in the 70s), the first team to be registered as a company, the first team to have white registered supporters.

It was Kaizer Chiefs who made a history of sorts in 1975 when they brought out former Brazilian international Jairzinho to this country. The Club continued in the 90 to ‘revolutionarise’ South African football becoming the first local club to have a club house, Kaizer Chiefs Village in Naturena. The giant Club will be the first club to own its shares in its own stadium to be built in Krugersdorp. This all started on the 7th January 1970.

Kaizer, who was plying his trade in America, found his friends and teammates at Orlando Pirates in 1969 sidelined. He played a vital role in the formation of what is currently the biggest sporting brand in the country, Kaizer Chiefs.

Together with the likes of Thomas “Zero My Hero” Johnson, the late Ewert “The Lip” Nene, Edward “Msomi” Khoza, Ratha Mokgoatlheng and others having toured the country successfully with Kaizer Chiefs XI in 1969, they decided to form what is known today as Kaizer Chiefs.

Kaizer Motaung remembered vividly, “It was on this meeting before I returned to the United States of America that I was pressured not to abandon the Kaizer XI. My father also played a huge role in convincing me, saying, “This will help you to have something to fall back on when you come back from the USA”. We needed strong administration as I was going to be away. I then recruited the late Clarence Mlokoti who was a good administrator. We also had people like China Ngema (currently a Director at the Club). This is how Kaizer Chiefs was conceived,” revealed Motaung.

When Chiefs started, they had their slogan, ‘Love & Peace’ and the brand attracted a ‘Hippie culture’ a while they were winning fans on the pitch with their brand of football. Most Chiefs players, spotted trousers with flares while among the clevers in the township and a majority of ordinary people-trousers had turn ups. Chiefs female supporters also showed traits of more liberalism in their dress sense.

Chiefs founder member, Zero Johnson recalled, “We wanted to be a team with style, not only on the field of play but off the field as well. I suddenly became a ‘dance teacher’ for the players. It was important for Kaizer Chiefs players to be able to dance when there is a call to do so. Fans loved mingling with players and dance so this was a strategy to wow more crowds,” he said laughing.

Life was not as easy though, as Club’s legend Michael Bizzah Dlamini revealed in a television show recently, “There were tough times at the beginning especially financially but we soldiered on. We were determined to take on the best in the country,” Side by side with success, death has been a constant visitor to Chiefs. The deaths of Ewert Nene, former captain, Ariel “Pro” Khongoane in the early 70s were shattering so was the death of the likes of Gilbert Sekhabi, Elkiem “Pro” Khumalo, Clarence Mlokoti and the legendary, Patrick “Ace” Ntsulengoe.

The Boet Erasmus ‘close call’ when player such as Doctor Khumalo, Moses Ngcobo, William Shongwe were pinned to the ground by two walls and the mass of humanity brought dark clouds for the Club. The Orkney disaster on Sunday, 13 January 1991 and the Ellis Park disaster on the 11th April 2001 will forever be remembered as dark moments since the Club’s inception 39 years ago.

Kaizer Chiefs though has always been all about winning from day one. The Club has won more trophies than any other soccer club in South Africa. It boasts with predicted 14 million fans around the country which makes it a biggest sporting establishment in the country and one of the biggest in the continent. The Club continues to grow with fans beyond South African boarders.

As the Club celebrates its 39th birthday, it is hoped that the new generation will match the achievements of some of the legends that turned up for the Club: Patrick “Ace” Ntsoelengoe, Ariel “Pro” Khongoane, Vusi “Computer” Lamola, Johnny “Magwegwe” Mokoena, Teenage Dladla, Lucky Stylianou, Peter B’alack, Johannes “Fetsi” Molatedi, Doctor “Pretty Boy” Khumalo, Lucas “Rhoo” Radebe and many others.

Happy 39th Birthday Kaizer Chiefs!

Source: www.kaizerchiefs.com

Telkom KO cup - 8 / 9 November

The Telkom knock out cup in South Africa is where the local soccer action. Here are the picks from the Sports Trader blog.

A rich prize in the local arena will be a big incentive for all the sides.

Saturday fixtures
Free State Stars v Bay United - Bay United win
Moroka Swallows v Orlando Pirates - Orlando Pirates win

Bay United managed to shock Sundowns in the last round and we're calling them to keep going against an average Free State Stars side.

Despite their up and down form in the league this season, I don't see how you can look beyond Pirates in this round.

Sunday fixtures
SuperSport United v Bloemfontein Celtic - Supersport United win
Ajax Cape Town v Golden Arrows - Ajax Cape Town win

In the Saturday fixtures, we backed the away sides. For Sunday we're backing the two home sides to take the honours.

Supersport United have been in top form and they should do the business against Bloem Celtic.

The Ajax vs. Golden Arrows match up is a little tougher but we're going with the Ajax side....

The irony of South African sport

Sport remains a hugely political tool in South Africa and I think many ordinary people find it frustrating when government officials who haven’t seen a sports field (let alone run on one) start making bold predictions about how they are going to ‘fix’ things.

Upfront, I completely acknowledge that sport was largely divided along racial lines in the past so I don’t deny that there is some merit in the racial arguments.

However the landscape is changing. No side in South African cricket or rugby enjoys the backing of the likes of billionaire Patrice Motsepe. The South African football side is not subjected to selection criteria of local, black coaches or quotas. In fact if one adds up how much the national football side has spent on foreign coaches or advisors over the last decade, it must be a massive figure.

This week has been a case in point about government administrators getting on their high horse and focusing on the wrong aspects of South African sport.

Every few years, sports administrators (typically those with political ties), will get together to hold a sports indaba of sorts where the ‘future strategic direction’ of sport will be covered. Ironically senior figures in cricket, rugby and soccer are normally not invited to give their input.

A hot topic this week has been the future of the Springbok emblem worn by the national rugby team. The politicos it should go because they believe it divides South Africa along racial lines.

The ‘logical decision’ is that it must go to unite South African sport.

Please note that senior rugby administrators and players were not invited to comment at this congress / indaba / conference or whatever they want to call it.

(Bear in mind – nobody actually knows if these guys have any legal backing to the ‘decisions’ that are taken here nor do they enjoy backing of the ruling government party, even if it is convened by some of its more militant members).

Now let’s remember that South African rugby has won 2 World Cups, a Tri-Nations, has a good black coach that is there on merit and has been able to attract an increasingly mixed racial audience to its grounds.

Soccer on the other hand is plumbing new lows. Millions have been spent on foreign coaches, the players themselves are reluctant to play and pick and choose the games they want. The national side is barely competitive with the minnows on the African continent that have budgets probably one fiftieth of what Bafana Bafana enjoys.

The national Olympics team managed a single medal at the 2008 Olympics campaign. We took along more non participating members in our squad than actually athletes, sponsors were disappointed or more interested in sponsoring the Paralympics squad and despite this, the athletes were poorly managed.

Throw in the fact that we have local government departments trying to sell off the land on which grass roots sports clubs operate to make sure that their books balance at the end of the year and the minor issue of a global financial crisis that is robbing all sports disciplines of sponsorship money and we have a pretty grim sports scene.

But no – the priority is to make sure we get rid of a brand that is highly successful, generates a lot of revenue for grass roots sports development.

I think we all agree that sport in South Africa is not perfect, but the meddling of sports officials is somewhat ironic. They talk about wanting to improve sport, but the idea of actually focusing on the problems is something that escapes some people’s agendas.