Mamelodi Sundowns and Orlando Pirates legend Teko Modise has delivered a timely message for today’s generation of footballers as the 2025/26 PSL season prepares to halt for the 2025 AFCON tournament.
The Africa Cup of Nations 2025 is set to electrify Morocco from December 21, 2025, to January 18, 2026. Last edition’s bronze medalists, Bafana Bafana, face a stiff challenge in Group B, where they are pooled alongside Angola, Egypt, and Zimbabwe.
The former Bafana midfield maestro, Modise, who began his top-flight journey at SuperSport United in 2006 before wrapping up his career at Cape Town City FC 13 years later, revealed the key factor that kept him from suffering major injuries.
Modise’s numbers and accolades tell the story: 348 club games, three PSL titles, a CAF Champions League medal, two MTN8 crowns, a Telkom Knockout and back-to-back PSL Footballer of the Year awards.
His insight comes at an important moment. Sundowns are navigating the business end of the campaign after missing pre-season due to their FIFA Club World Cup commitments, and Modise believes injury prevention now becomes just as crucial as winning games.
Speaking on Sundowns TV’s Pitchside Podcast, he explained that one of the biggest safeguards against overload-related injuries is extra individual work away from the usual team sessions.
“When we speak of something as former footballers, most of the time we are speaking directly to the footballers that are playing right now,” Modise said on the show.
“Often they feel we speak of something we have never done. Now, me, I’ve never been the lazy player, right? Unfortunately, we could not record and post things like players today. But we were doing lots of extra training.
“We asked your Denis Onyango to stay behind so we could practice things like penalties. I wanted to do more. I would still go to the same side just to train my brain that I won’t miss.
“We’d come into the gym, do some light work. But I never really, really liked gym. Like, I hated being in the gym. But then you get to understand. I can say this, in all my career, azang ka limala ]I never really suffered serious injuries].
“I never really out of the game because I’m injured. Unfortunately, that’s how fortunate I was. It was only knocks. It was also because I was training a little bit harder. I remember people that were known to do all those extra trainings, it was either, Mshishi [Themba Zwane] and Hlompho [Kekana]. You’d see that in the games. And then some other guys in the team started doing extras. And then the other guys who did not do it started falling off [with injuries],” Modise added.
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