MAHLATSE MPHAHLELE | Unfinished business: just one more trophy to go

Pitso “Jingles” Mosimane has won almost everything as a coach at club level and now has his sights set on coaching Bafana Bafana to success in the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon).

His trophy cabinet boasts 19 major trophies with SuperSport United, Mamelodi Sundowns and Egypt’s Al Ahly. They include three CAF Champions League titles — the highest accolade in continental club football — five South African Premier Soccer League (PSL) titles and one Egyptian Premier League title. He also has two Fifa Club World Cup bronze medals.

All that’s missing, he believes, is the Afcon trophy.

When coach Hugo Broos packed his bags recently and returned to Belgium after five successful years at the helm of Bafana, it was no surprise that the football fraternity was in almost universal agreement that Mosimane should succeed him. The technical committee of the South African Football Association (Safa), led by chair Jack Maluleke, obliged and recommended Mosimane, 62, as coach.

For Mosimane, the job comes with the delectable prospect of finally filling that void in the trophy cabinet. But Safa and Mosimane are yet to find each other on the contract for his second coming. The key issue in the delay is that Mosimane’s representatives want his salary to be the same as Broos’s — R1.2m a month.

Safa is said to be reluctant, amid murmurs in the association that its financial position meant it could hardly afford Broos’s salary. Mosimane also wants trusted lieutenants — fitness trainer Kabelo Rangoaga and performance analyst Musi Matlaba — to get full-time contracts as members of his staff.

It was an embarrassing episode in which Bafana missed out on qualification for the tournament

Over the past decade, Mosimane dominated the club scene, locally and on the continent, to the point where he is considered one of the best coaches Africa has produced. However, that reputation, which has meant he is in high demand for lucrative coaching jobs on the continent as well as in the oil-rich Middle East, hasn’t doused his ambition to coach a national team to Afcon championship.

He was linked with the high-profile national teams of Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Ghana, but nothing came of those associations. Instead, it is Bafana, which he coached between 2010 and 2012, to which he is returning.

His timing is impeccable because qualifiers for the 2027 Afcon in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, also known as Pamoja, start late next month with a tricky home tie against Guinea.

It is going to be a busy year-end for Bafana because after hosting Guinea, they travel to Eritrea a few days later and have back-to-back matches against Benni McCarthy’s Kenya in November.

Mosimane tried and failed to qualify for Afcon in 2012. It was an embarrassing episode in which Bafana missed out on qualification for the tournament that was co-hosted by Equatorial Guinea and Gabon because the national team misunderstood the rules of the competition. After drawing 0-0 with Sierra Leone at Mbombela Stadium, Mosimane’s Bafana staged a synchronised dance in celebration, believing they had done enough to go through on goal difference. But they had miscalculated, because in that tournament it is performance against one another that decides who goes through, not goal differences.

Hence, Niger advanced and Mosimane was fired.

But that was not to be the end of Mosimane’s coaching career. He returned to club football and took on the demanding job of head coach at Mamelodi Sundowns, the country’s richest team, which was at the time going through an uncharacteristic slump.

As head coach, not only did he return the Pretoria team to dominance in local football, but he also led the club to its maiden Champions League title. In the process, Sundowns became a permanent feature of the tournament’s knockout stages which, until then, were dominated by North African teams.

For the first time since South Africa’s return to continental football, a local team was considered an equal among African giants such as Al Ahly, the DRC’s TP Mazembe, Tunisia’s Esperance, Algeria’s ES Sétif and Morocco’s Wydad Casablanca.

In normal circumstances, the coach should already be traversing the country watching players and talking to PSL coaches ahead of announcing his preliminary and final squads

Yet the disappointment of not qualifying for Afcon in 2012 left Mosimane with a sense of unfinished business. He is taking the job this time around believing that the current crop of players, who qualified for this year’s Fifa World Cup after many years in the cold, can help him get his hands on the Afcon trophy.

He is also motivated by the fact that, even though South Africa returned to international football when he was in his prime, he had moderate success with the national team as a player, earning fewer than 10 caps.

But there is a strong belief in the football fraternity that, even though Mosimane’s previous stints as player and coach at Bafana were not illustrious, the experience he has amassed since his 2012 axing puts him in serious contention to become the second Bafana coach to win gold at Afcon. The only other coach to do so was the late Clive Barker, who led Bafana to victory when the tournament was held in South Africa in 1996.

Mosimane’s post-Bafana coaching experience includes being in charge of Al Ahly, said to be Africa’s greatest soccer club, as well as venturing into the uncharted territories, for a South African, of coaching in Saudi Arabia (Al-Ahli Saudi FC and Abha FC), the United Arab Emirates (Al Wahda FC) and Iran (Esteghlal FC). This experience, pundits argue, means he is in a much better position to navigate his way around the continent on the way to qualifying for the Afcon finals.

It should also be pointed out that even though his stint as Bafana coach was relatively short, he had been part of the national team setup for a longer time, having served as assistant coach to Joel Santana, who led Bafana at the 2009 Fifa Confederations Cup tournament, as well as under Brazilian legend Carlos Alberto Parreira in the 2010 World Cup.

If the money issues are resolved and Mosimane signs on the dotted line, Bafana would be getting a far more mature and accomplished coach, a key ingredient in successfully dealing with pressure from the ever-demanding fans and treacherous Safa politics.

Broos, who revived Bafana with back-to-back Afcon qualifications and a historic qualification to the knockout stage of the recent World Cup, has left a team with a good balance of experience and youth.

This means Mosimane is not starting off a low base.

Broos has left a well-drilled team that enjoys the support of the country after creditable performances on football’s biggest stage.

As Mosimane and Safa feel each other out regarding the contract, it is not known who is now scouting for players and who is compiling a technical and logistics plan for the matches against Guinea and Eritrea next month

The core of the team is not expected to change, with senior players such as Ronwen Williams, Sipho Chaine, Khuliso Mudau, Nkosinathi Sibisi, Aubrey Modiba, Teboho Mokoena, Thalente Mbatha, Sphephelo Sithole, Oswin Appollis, Lyle Foster and Evidence Makgopa likely to retain their places.

More good news for Mosimane is that there are many younger players, such as Mbekezeli Mbokazi, Ime Okon, Olwethu Makhanya, Tylon Smith, Shandre Campbell, Relebohile Mofokeng, Thapelo Maseko and Tshepang Moremi, ready to step up to the plate.

Mosimane will have to make a call on players who were on the fringes of the team, such as Ricardo Goss, Samukele Kabini, Bradley Cross, Khulumani Ndamane, Thabang Matuludi and Kamogelo Sebelebele.

Over the past year or so, Broos repeatedly declined to include defender Grant Kekana and midfielders Thembinkosi Lorch and Gift Links despite good form at their clubs, and it remains to be seen if Mosimane will give them a look-in.

There are also Brandon Petersen, Thabiso Monyane, Thapelo Morena, Lebohang Maboe, Patrick Maswanganyi and Brooklyn Poggenpoel, good players who did not make the World Cup cut.

Mosimane’s possible start will not be entirely smooth because US-based key defender Mbokazi has been ruled out for the year with a muscle injury, so Okon will have a new partner at central defence.

He may also be without influential midfielder Mokoena for the first match against Guinea because he suffered a horrific ankle injury during the MTN8 quarterfinal win over Polokwane City last weekend.

As Mosimane and Safa feel each other out regarding the contract, it is not known who is now scouting for players and who is compiling a technical and logistics plan for the matches against Guinea and Eritrea next month.

In normal circumstances, the coach should already be traversing the country watching players and talking to PSL coaches ahead of announcing his preliminary and final squads.

It is also only fair to the players to know what is happening because the appointment of a new coach is always unsettling, as there will inevitably be changes.

Mosimane’s last coaching job was last year, but he has kept himself abreast of all matters football by researching and writing a youth coaching manual that was released last month.

All in all, he is in a good position to lead Bafana to Afcon glory — and fill that space in his cabinet.