It is also without any touch of doubt that the bookmakers will throw the odds in the Kaizer Chiefs coach’s favour ahead of tomorrow’s MTN8 Final against Ajax Cape Town at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium.
However, without any silverware to boast of at club level since being handed his first head coaching job at Manning Rangers a dozen years ago, Komphela – whose real name Stephen has ‘honour, reward and crown’ connotations attached to it – is now standing on the verge of actually embracing the meaning of his name by being ‘honoured, rewarded and crowned’ as champion for the first time in his club coaching career.
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Being in charge of a club that has won 15 of the 20 finals they have contested in this particular competition since it was established back in 1972, it might be expected that the 48-year-old from the town of Kroonstad will choose to be loudly confident in anticipation of his first bite of the big cakes he will get accustomed to chewing at Naturena.
However, he is cautiously buoyant yet guarded.
“… For now one wants to be humble and accept the fact that you don’t win it until it is played yet your humility must not go to a level where you are too timid,” reasons Komphela in his typical wisdom-pregnant speeches.
“In as much as your confidence must not portray any level of arrogance, so be reasonably confident without being arrogant, and also be humble enough yet not timid to give a reflection that we are ready for it because we have millions of people saying we want to win it,” he says.
“If you are way too humble they might misinterpret that as lack of confidence and if you show confidence they sometimes think it is arrogance, so we are trying to strike a balance.”
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While choosing to be calm, Komphela knows for a fact that Chiefs provides the kind of environment that will have him making cherished additions to his curriculum vitae in the days after the end of any cup competition, and he acknowledges the fact that the ‘soil is fertile enough for success’ at Naturena.
“I am very careful with my statements and every time I make a statement I want it to be a statement that will not come back to haunt me. What I say today must stand in the next 20 years,” he explains.
“So let me go back and draw from one of the statements that I made when I was given an opportunity to coach at this club that ‘the soil is fertile enough for success’. This team has a pedigree and a history and background of success so when this comes, don’t be surprised because they assisted you in coming here but take it with utmost humility, and that is where I am,” reasons Komphela.
All the same ‘Stevovo’ you have it all to lose in this one tomorrow because the Chiefs faithful will hate to be the first ones going up the podium.
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