Pitso Mosimane is a light against the gloom that afflicts declining men’s football in SA.
Some have mistaken Mosimane — who speaks his mind and is skilled in playing the mind games and riling opponents — for being arrogant. It is a gross mischaracterisation.
He has the arrogance of a Jose Mourinho or Alex Ferguson that any top coach needs to flourish in a cut-throat industry.
But stop to listen to Mosimane and it’s all passion, naked honesty and even — from someone who has achieved so much — complete humility. He is a footballing Castro or Guevara.
The coach who joined an elite few on the continent being bestowed his Caf Pro Licence — the highest certificate in football, matching its European counterpart — at Safa House last week, remains deferential to the greats whose shoulders he stands on, and grateful to those who supported him on the way to the peak he has scaled. The likes of Jomo Sono, SuperSport United and late Tommy Madigage.
South Africans should be as proud of Mosimane as he is proudly South African. Mosimane makes clear his disdain for the hiring of European names — those who have been retreaded in SA as often as a minibus taxi tyre, and those who arrive fresh from mediocrity and obscurity — ahead of SA talent based on possessing a name that sounds like it can coach.
And he’s right. How many top-class Europeans have come to SA and improved the game in the past 20 years? Foppe de Haan, perhaps Muhsin Ertugral for a while, but who else?
Yes, the Stuart Baxters and Ernst Middendorps have brought something technical to the Premiership and truckloads of organisation, and earned results and, in the case of the former, trophies. But at the expense of the flair and creativity that flourished in the 1970s and 1980s.
SA fans are brimful of organisation and yearn for flair. SA’s identity has been lost. Promoting and up-skilling SA coaches with potential — the Eric Tinklers and Arthur Zwanes, and hiring only foreigners with genuine pedigree, has to be one way to get it back.
Restoring football at schools is another. Mosimane’s revolution will be to play his part restoring the schools football that saw Doctor Khumalo and John “Shoes” Moshoeu battle each other in front of crowds in Soweto in the 1980s, which was somehow decimated by democracy.
Mosimane has the clout to make a bigger difference than those small-business enthusiasts
As Mosimane spoke of his plans at Safa House, some journalists critical of the association could not help imagining asking the Safa bosses on the podium why it was a private citizen — albeit a doyen of coaching, and one partly produced by them — formulating the schools project.
But they kept the question silent because they knew it would only result in glares of contempt at their supposed petulance, rather than recognition of their culpability in the stagnation of the past 30 years.
Mosimane is not alone trying to do something the suits should have done years ago. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of small-business people, football lovers and enthusiasts who on a shoe-string form academies or own third or fourth-tier clubs.
It can cost R60,000 a month to run such teams — R150,000 for a third-tier Motsepe League team pushing for promotion to the GladAfrica Championship. So, most of the money goes to a first-tier team, not to youth structures.
If such club owners could be subsidised by the billionaires of professional football, or get sponsorships prioritising not just hyped first prizes, but some support, they could also have flourishing youth teams — players would be produced and the Premiership would improve. But it doesn’t happen.
Mosimane has the clout to make a bigger difference than those small-business enthusiasts. His international exploits and the trophies won with Mamelodi Sundowns and Al Ahly would pale in comparison to that achievement.
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