Orlando Pirates and their Soweto neighbours Kaizer Chiefs were always a formidable proposition and more than capable of inflicting humiliation on any opponent. But times have changed – now it’s Mamelodi Sundowns who lord it over the domestic league.
Name any category – trophies, players, coaching staff, scouting network and continental vision – Patrice Motsepe’s empire has left its rivals lagging light years behind.
On the field and off it, the club, once dismissed as having a mere ‘67 fans’, has gone from strength to strength and now eclipses their Soweto rivals in so many areas.
Not only have they won five league titles on the trot, but they are shaping into a team capable of challenging in Africa.
FARPost interrogates why Downs are now worlds apart from the once-mighty Soweto giants.
CHOPPING AND CHANGING COACHES
Motsepe, then the president of Sundowns, would have mastered his biggest football lessons between 2000 and 2012.
A six-year drought between 2000 and 2006 saw the Brazilians play musical chairs in the dugout. 1996 Afcon winning captain Neil Tovey and the late Ted Dumitru served as interim coaches before making way for Argentinian Àngel Cappa.
It finally took Tovey and Miguel Gamondi to guide them to the 2006 league title as co-coaches. Still, the club appointed Gordon Igesund, a championship winner with Manning Rangers, Santos and Orlando Pirates prior, and he did it again at Sundowns in 2007.
Naively, they went French, with the late Henri Michel taking over three months into the 2008/09 campaign. Four months later, Michel was shown the exit door and replaced by Trott Moloto in the interim while management was working on bringing in former Barcelona great Hristo Stoichkov.
Moloto won the 2008 Nedbank Cup as Stoichkov waited in the wings. However, the Bulgarian cut ties with the Tshwane giants after finishing second.
His assistant, Antonio Lopez Habas, stepped into his big boots, but the Spaniard threw in the towel before the end of the 2010/11 season following death threats from Downs fans.
Highly rated Dutchman Johan Neeskens, a close friend of the late great Johan Cruyff, walked through the Chloorkop revolving door, lasting only a little over 50 matches with no trophy. In fact, he almost relegated Sundowns.
Pitso Mosimane then took his place in December 2012, and the rest, as they say, is history.
A glance at Chiefs and Pirates at the moment – both squads bear the scars of multiple coaching changes. Since Stuart Baxter was around in 2015, Steve Komphela, Giovanni Solinas, Ernst Middendorp and Gavin Hunt tried to stamp their authority on the squad. Now Arthur Zwane is at the helm after taking over from Baxter.
Their neighbours Pirates have suffered the same plague. Since Ruud Krol last won the title in 2011, the Bucs’ hot seat has exchanged hands like no man’s business. Craig Rosslee, Julio Cesar Leal, Augusto Palacios, Roger de Sa, Vladimir Vermezovic, Eric Tinkler, Kjell Jonevret, Milutin Sredojevic, Rulani Mokwena, Jozef Zinnbauer and Fadlu Davids/Mandla Ncikazi have all taken turns to oversee the long dry spell.
Spaniard Jose Riveiro is at the wheel, having taken over from the duo of Ncikazi [now second assistant] and Davids [who left at the expiry of his contract] during the off-season.
POOR RECRUITMENT
The chopping and changing of coaches is one thing, but the lack of coordination in the transfer market, willingly bringing below-par players in a desperate bid to reverse their slide. Very few signings from either Soweto side can be considered a success.
You only have to glance at the 202/22 DStv Premiership table to appreciate the current gulf in quality between the respective squads.
There has been so much dross and deadwood come in and out of Pirates in recent seasons that it’s little wonder they aren’t remotely competitive.
Almost eight years after they last lifted a piece of silverware, Chiefs against Sundowns looked like mid-table fodder.
The Pretoria side, of course, hasn’t been short of cash in any department since Mosimane took over but there at least appears to be a general sense of coordination to their equally lavish spending on players.
Before Mosimane, they were a bit scattergun, at some point having 24 foreign nationals in their books when they could only use five. However, most of their signings in the past ten years have been brilliant, adding value to the team.
Walter Steenbok, a former scout for Downs and Amakhosi, tells FARPost that he is convinced the club’s scouting network has been instrumental in devising and carrying out its strategy, which has paid dividends.
You certainly won’t hear any dissent towards Downs’ management, in contrast to the disgruntlement across the province at the two Soweto big guns.
Perhaps the easy test of squad strength is to name players from one team that would walk into the other. It’s hard to pinpoint more than two players from Chiefs and Pirates who could get a game for Sundowns at the moment.
The squads are alarmingly thin on quality and short on experience. In comparison, the Tshwane giants have at least two top-quality players in just about every position on the field.
Farouk Khan, who won two titles with the Glamour Boys in 2004 and 2005, says that his former team had at least five or six players in the national team at any given time.
“At one stage, if you picked the Bafana Bafana team, you would have at least six or five Chiefs players in the squad, but the quality of players is not the same compared to the past,” says Khan, who also had a stint with Downs.
In essence, Manqoba Mngqithi and Rulani Mokwena are spoilt for choice when it comes to attacking options, from Peter Shalulile, Thabiso Kutumela, Kermit Erasmus and Abubeker Nassir to the creative dynamos of Bradley Ralani, Themba Zwane, Neo Maema and Hashim Domingo.
Revered administrator Senzo Mbatha praises Downs’ management for letting Mngqithi and Mokwena, who deputised Mosimane for much of his eight-year stay at Chloorkop, continue when he left for Egyptian giants Al Ahly in 2020.
“They didn’t dismantle anything; they just continued from where Pitso left off,” Mbatha tells FARPost.
SCOUTING NETWORKS
Floyd Mogale recalls spending two weeks in Cape Town following a top talent that Downs wanted to sign. “I spent two weeks in Cape Town monitoring this player we wanted to sign. I watched what he does before, after training and after a game. After one training session, I followed him to Cubana, saw what he drank and ate and smoked, and I made my recommendation to the team,” Mogale tells FARPost. Such is the meticulous work that goes into the club’s scouting. They look beyond their targets’ playing abilities.
“In terms of structure, the academy, analysis and scouting – they’re 10 years ahead of South African football.”
Sundowns have a scouting team with more than 15 people with varying responsibilities – provincial scouts, a head of scout, someone in the second-tier league, a scout in the third tier and someone who focuses on the African continent.
“They have even taken their game to another level by appointing data analysts – data scouts, which is what big teams abroad do,” renowned scout Steenbok says.
On the other hand, Amakhosi and Bucs have not invested in scouting. It remains unclear who is responsible for recruiting players at the two teams with suggestions that, in some cases, management has a hand.
“Some clubs bring in players based on what agents tell them. Agents will sell you dummies,” adds Mogale.
Fans are left questioning the pedigree of certain players signed by the two clubs.
VISION AND AMBITION
Last season, when both Sundowns and Pirates had to play their Caf matches away in North Africa, the defending league champions left on a Monday for a Saturday fixture in Sudan. In contrast, Bucs left on Thursday for a Sunday game.
Downs were in Khartoum early on Tuesday, giving them four full days to rest and acclimatise before the game. At the same time, Buccaneers, who flew to Dubai, then Tunisia, before connecting to their final destination, only had two days in Libya.
“Clubs like Al Ahly in Egypt fly private so that they can get to their opponents early without the hassle of long, tedious flights. It’s tiring to fly,” Mogale says.
Mbatha, who has worked for Simba and Young Africans in Dar es Salaam, is convinced that when Sandawana goes into the market, they are looking at players that can give them the edge on the continent.
“The players they have brought in, they are not just signing to win the domestic league but to challenge in the Champions League,” Mbatha tells FARPost.
Mngqithi has previously said: “We want to conquer Africa, and it starts with the PSL.”
EMBEDDED CULTURE AND PLAYING STYLE
Another school of thought is that Sundowns are reaping the rewards of embedding a long-term identity. Muhsin Ertugral, on the other hand, believes Chiefs need a “long-term plan”, which would include having a clear style of play and philosophy.
“Chiefs shouldn’t be playing a transition game, they have always been a team that dominates matches, so they need to find new strategies; when the fans are at the stadiums, they want to see a certain type of football, win in a certain way, and I think Chiefs have enough quality in the team, so they need to look in the details, what is the philosophy and I know there are capable people there,” Ertugral tells FARPost.
Felix Sapao, an intermediary who follows the PSL with keen interest, is convinced Sundowns have a playing style and sign players that fit into it.
“Sundowns have a way of playing, a clear style of play and the kind of players they sign fit into it. It’s taken them time to develop that style, and they seem to stick to it,” Sapao tells FARPost.
RECENT TROPHIES
The Soweto giants have always measured their stature in the South African game by the number of trophies they’ve won.
This was never an issue a couple of years ago as they won a couple of cup titles.
Since then, the trophies have reduced to a trickle. There have been no league titles, with Chiefs finishing fifth last season while Pirates were sixth.
Of course, Bucs won the MTN8 in 2020. This would be more than satisfactory for most clubs, but this is paltry by their high standards. Downs have been in the ascendant since Pitso Mosimane took over in 2012, acquiring a thirst for the major prizes. They even captured the Caf Champions League in 2016, a frontier they still look to conquer.
The historic 2020 treble of the domestic Premier League, Telkom Knockout and Nedbank Cup they won under Mosimane shortly before he left underlined how they had dominated the domestic scene.
Unless the two giants from Soweto get their act together, they will continue to settle for a flicker of past glories. In the meantime, their Tshwane rivals will enjoy an impressive redecoration of their cash-flush trophy cabinet.
