If there’s anyone who understands Nkosingiphile Ngcobo’s arduous journey to the PSL, it’s Lungelo Bhengu.
Bhengu was by no means a bystander but witnessed almost the same misery his friend experienced as they weaved their way through the rigours of amateur football.
The two – whose ages are just a year apart – were raised in Mafunze, Elandskop, some 150 km from Pietermaritzburg.
They both grew up on a diet of football in the dust under the tutelage of one Styles Colvelle, who coached them at MC Arsenal.
HOW IT ALL STARTED FOR NKOSINGIPHILE NGCOBO
“He was nine years old when he came to MC Arsenal. Although he was still very young, you could see his potential. He had to walk a good 2km to get to training,” Colvelle tells FARPost in a telephonic interview.
Interestingly, his mother, Thembelihle Audrey Ngcobo’s memory of her second-born son’s younger days is with a soccer ball at his tiny feet.
Perhaps he took after her following her stint as a defender back in college. Or his late dad, Sicelo, who Colvelle bluntly says struggled to contain marauding strikers as a centre-back.
For young ‘Mshini’, it didn’t matter where he was; he just enjoyed his football. On the dusty streets of Mafunze or even inside the house, a soccer ball just had to be juggled.
Sometimes his love for football would keep him away from home until dusk. “He was always playing with a soccer ball,” Mrs Ngcobo told the Kaizer Chiefs website. “Mshini would sometimes break a window in the house when miss-kicking the ball.”
When it was training or playing a game till late, Colvelle, who knew his dad well, would make sure he dropped him off at home.
“I would tell him not to come when I was not there because I didn’t want him walking in the dark alone. But he would just come even if I was not there. I guess because he would be enjoying himself, he would lose track of time and end up staying until late,” adds Colvelle.
At about 12, he threw the young boy into the Under 17 team with Bhengu, who was a year older than him. He was too good for his agemates and could hold his own against more older boys.
WHY THEY CALLED HIM DAVID SILVA
“He was that good, and I felt he could compete with bigger boys. There were games where he would destroy teams single-handedly with his passes; he could read the game very well. The other boys likened him to [Mesuit] Ozil and David Silva.”
However, Bhengu remembers how his love for the game started to fizzle out as time went on. It came to a point where they would sometimes beg him to go and play.
The only reason they would not give up on him was that, young as he was, he possessed the game-changing effect. Little did they know they were pulling him towards his destiny.
“There were times when he would decide he was not keen on training. We would beg him because we knew we needed him in our team,” the Maritzburg United defender tells FARPost.
In one of those ‘forced outings’, a coach from Johannesburg, only identified as Zuma, happened to like Ngcobo and Bhengu.
“A guy called Zuma was impressed by Nkosingiphile and another of my boys, and he asked to speak to them. He then spoke to their parents, and they had an agreement. That’s how he left,” recalls the MC Arsenal mentor.
WHEN 15 BOYS SHARED A TWO-BEDROOMED HOUSE
Bhengu says Ngcobo was 14 when he had to be weaned from the loving home of his parents to a two-roomed house shared by 15 boys in New Canada, Soweto.
He recalls that among those hopefuls was Wiseman Meyiwa, who suffered a career-ending injury in a horrific car accident that left him in a wheelchair in 2018.
That chapter, Bhengu believes, made his talented friend realise football was something he had to take seriously.
At first, the pitiful living conditions were not necessarily an issue. The boys had been sold the Jozi Dream. Jo’burg was supposedly where it would all happen.
“Zuma had told Colvell that he could take us to Johannesburg, where he had connections. We didn’t mind the conditions at first because we wanted to play football,” Bhengu says.
Their first stop in the ‘City of Gold’ was Jomo Cosmos in 2014, but that would only last for a few months due to transport money struggles.
“We both started at Jomo Cosmos, but we couldn’t stay too long because there was no money for us to attend training,” he says.
Reality started setting in for the teenage boys. Sharing the tiny space in the two-roomed house with 13 other young boys was undoubtedly no stroll in the park. It meant having to sleep on the floor.
With just an old blanket for padding on a concrete floor, every night around 3 AM, the lower back woke them up screaming as loud as their spine during those fitful floor slumbers.
“We had to sleep on the floor, and we would have to go to school in the morning. Our backs would be sore during the day. It was bad,” Bhengu shares.
Mshini’s mother has previously admitted how hard it was at first with their son over 450km away. “It was not always easy at first,” Thembelihle explains, “We missed our son. He was so young and already far from home.”
LEARNING HOW TO COOK
They would send R500 meant for the boy’s upkeep every month to continue under the care of Zuma while schooling at Orlando High.
Bhengu reveals that their diet back then was something they would quickly want to forget. “We cooked for ourselves although we were all young. At 14 or 15, you’re definitely not a good cook, so it was trial and error. The food would not be good at all because we were all learning how to cook,” he says.
Potatoes were the most abused – eaten grilled, scalloped, oven-fried, baked, mashed and boiled; you name it. The light at the end of the tunnel began to show when Zuma finally took the boys to Chiefs. ‘Mshini’ was first to walk into the Naturena gates before Bhengu followed a few months later.
The 22-year-old Bhengu says that in their early days at Naturena, it was already clear that Ngcobo would be a hit.
“When we played tournaments like Future Champs, everyone could see that Mshini was going far with his football. He was too talented,” says the Maritzburg United right back.
Relatively small at 1.65 metres, Ngcobo made up for it with quick decision-making on the pitch, excellent ball control and passing abilities.
Soon enough, youth national team call-ups started coming. Thabo Senong handed him the captain’s armband in one of the games at the Cosafa Under 20 Youth Championship as Amajita went on to lift the title in 2017.
SOCCER IS MY LIFE
The same year he got promoted to the Amakhosi senior team, declaring that it was an opportunity he would grab with both hands. “Soccer is my life, and I will do everything to grab this opportunity given to me to succeed at Kaizer Chiefs,” he said shortly after his promotion.
Bhengu says his progress was an encouragement to everyone in their circles. “We were so happy when he broke through to join Chiefs because we knew how difficult it was to get to that stage.
At some point, we wanted to go back home when things were so difficult, but we were patient,” says Bhengu, who went straight to The Team of Choice after his Chiefs stint.
While part of the first-team squad, the left-footed Ngcobo also played regularly as captain for Amakhosi’s reserves in the Multichoice-Diski Challenge [MDC] throughout the 2017/2018 and 2018/2019 seasons.
Even though he was one of the youngest players on that reserve side, he guided them to the MDC title in 2018.
Joseph Malongoane remembers his early days in the first team. He says when the boy from KZN stepped up to play with the big boys, he was never overawed at all. After all, he had inspired the Under 20 team to a bronze medal at the 2019 Africa Championships. That feat came along with being named in the CAF XI team.
“I’d been following him in the MDC, and when he came to the senior team, you could tell he was ready to play. It was seemingly easy for him because he played with no fear. He was so brave. For many boys, the transition from MDC to PSL is not easy, but they didn’t struggle at all. It showed that he was talented,” Molangoane, now at Marumo Gallants, tells FARPost.
Chiefs’ coach Arthur Zwane is on record as singling him out as “the go-to player of the team”. While he didn’t enjoy playing time under Stuart Baxter, each Zwane was in charge, he let him loose. And he never been disappointed.
“He rises to the occasion when you need him. He is amazing,” Zwane said. Undoubtedly, ‘Mshini’ has everything it takes to become Chiefs’ go-to player in the near future.
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