Soccer talk left question marks
Soccer talk left question marks
Posted: 2010-02-19 11:23
I was in Sandton’s taxi rank sitting in a taxi to Midrand on February 18 looking forward to getting home.
I was in a relaxed mood reflecting on a day gone by when suddenly a guy who was sitting behind me tapped me on the shoulder, no “Heita” or however you greet, and so begin a flurry of questions.
I know it sounds so unreal, but probably this guy, I don’t know his name, always sees me in the taxi paging through to the sport section of newspapers or hitting buttons on my Nokia 7100s to www.kickoff.com and thought I’m the man to provide the answers. How wrong he was. As the taxi moved to take us home, so the questions kept coming and an hour later, I got home and I thought this is too good to keep it to myself.
Firstly, he asked about the Promotional Play-Offs. “Why do we have the Play-Offs?” and I kept quiet because all we ever get from the PSL are contradictory statements.
Before I knew it, he said: “You know, I come from the rural areas in the Eastern Cape and I hear SAFA will have R1-billion in its coffers at the end of the World Cup and I wish they can build a School of Excellence from where I come from, because frankly we are a poor nation and the kids from my area will never afford the trip to Jozi to attend trials. If it is true they will have so much money, why not build a School of Excellence in each province? We are missing out on a lot of talent, because these kids simply can’t afford to attend trials in Jo’burg”.
This got my mind racing, because just the other day Josta Dladla said when he went for trials at Jomo Cosmos in 1996, he never touched the ball in 20 minutes. There were apparently 2 000 trialists… you wonder how many good players Jomo, a renowned talent spotter, missed that day. But all I did was nod to what this guy was saying.
Halfway through the trip, the taxi driver almost drove straight into a pothole and nearly causing an accident trying to avoid it, and though I had a big accident with my family in Durban early this year, I had no recollection of the nightmare of that fateful day in January because of what the taxi driver almost did. I was listening to a man who was making a lot of sense.
He then said: “Many people in our football wear too many hats… take Irvin Khoza, for example. I wonder what happened to Ace Ncobo’s dossier (the 212 pages on corruption involving referees and club bosses). If say for argument’s sake Orlando Pirates are implicated, they won’t be punished, because their owner is the PSL chairman?” and I couldn’t help but just nod in agreement.
I was not saying much as the guy is talkative. He then said: “I don’t understand why SuperSport United have their offices in Randburg, when they are a Pretoria team. Why don’t they have everything in one place where they originated? Chelsea in England are based in London, right? That’s where they have their Stadium, their offices and that’s where their English supporters are. Pirates play at Coca-Cola Park; their offices are in Parktown while their roots are in Soweto, why don’t they have everything in Soweto? They have a 100-year lease for the Coca-Cola Park Stadium, what nonsense is that?”
Soon he was on the Jet Rookie club award. “I saw that one of the current nominations is Ndumiso Mabena of Pirates, but how many games has he played?” and I said his only start at Pirates was in the Telkom Charity Cup months ago. He continued: “The other time it was Knowledge Musona and as far as I can remember he didn’t play a game in December, which means he was not supposed to share the award with Siyanda Xulu. I read it somewhere” he said and I thought to myself “You are reading the right website, boet”, because that very point was argued by KickOff.com.
Next it was the national team. “You see, the reason Egypt do so well is there are no benchwarmers in that team. Where was (Amr) Zaki during the Afcon? He was not there, because he hasn’t been playing a lot of football these days, but here in South Africa the benchwarmers easily make it to the squad, that makes no sense at all” and I supported him, adding that benchwarmers should never ever be selected for national team duty and he added that he was happy that Carlos Alberto Parreira said the World Cup squad could be made up of at least 60% of local players.
More intriguing statements and questions were coming… “I don’t understand why we hire foreign coaches,” he said. “The successful countries in the world have never been coached by foreign coaches” and we helped each other mention Brazil, Italy, Germany, Spain and France, and I thought of Egypt, but I was not sure about them, maybe someone did in years gone by. I never mentioned any African country; partly because the perception in this continent is that the European coaches know everything, are more qualified but look at what Dunga is doing with Brazil.
He then called on the driver when we reached Midrand. When he was getting out he added, “My brother, the bad soccer administrators in this country will eventually leave soccer to the right people… if not, they will die one day so they won’t be in power forever”. Ouch!
By the way, he never mentioned the Soweto Derby between Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs tomorrow… it has lost its spark, hasn’t it?
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