While Orlando Pirates coach Milutin ‘Micho’ Sredojevic is making a return to this fixture 11 years since he was last involved, Steve Komphela remains in charge of Kaizer Chiefs for the third year running but he will be facing yet another different coach on the Pirates bench.
The last time that the same coaches were on both benches for two years in a row was in the 2009-10 and 2010-11 fixtures when Rudi Krol and Vladimir Vermezovic were the bosses.
Since then there has been a series of changes on the benches of either with the Pirates wheel of change spinning faster.
For the 2011-12 season Julio Leal was in charge of Pirates for the MTN8 final along with the first league match played a week later.
Augusto Palacios then came to oversee the league reverse fixture after taking over as caretaker boss following the resignation of Leal in February 2012.
For Chiefs they had 'VV' for both league fixtures and the MTN8 final.
The next season (2012-13) Stuart Baxter was the AmaKhosi boss with Roger de Sa at the opposite end.
Then in the 2013-14 campaign De Sa continued on the bench for Pirates for the first Soweto Derby league fixture and the two semi-final MTN8 fixtures.
For the reverse fixture VV took over at Pirates in a match which was only his second in charge after his surprise appointment a month earlier.
Baxter stayed for the season at Chiefs.
The 2014-15 campaign had Baxter sat on the Chiefs bench in his last season while Eric Tinkler was in charge of the dressing room for the two league matches, while VV was on the bench for the MTN8 final for Pirates.
Into the 2015-16 season AmaKhosi now had Komphela getting his first taste of the Derby while Tinkler remained in charge at Pirates.
Last season Komphela remained at Chiefs while Pirates had Muhsin Ertugral for the first round league game and then Kjell Jonevret in the reverse fixture.
The latest Derby has Komphela at Chiefs while Micho has returned to lead the bench after taking over from Jonevret.
Micho – who hails from Serbia where there is a fierce derby which involves Red Star Belgrade and Partizan Belgrade – understands this local contest.
“I know that a match of this magnitude has tension and pressure but I would like all that tension and pressure to stay with me and the technical team on the bench and let the players be responsible and give their best on the field. I am convinced that if we invest all the quality and talent that we have we will get all the kind of result that we are looking for,” he says stretching his memory back to December 9, 2006.
“Similar drive to the game with a bit difference in that the game in South Africa has grown from strength to strength and this is now by far the most competitive league in Africa. The biggest derby of this league brings special excitement to the country. At that time I saw close to 100 000 people and my biggest memory was David Obua coming for the throw and then putting his hand on my shoulder talking to me during a stoppage. That would have been impossible in any other derby around the world but here we see something phenomenal in this planet. The love for the game is uniting South Africans because this is something special,” he says.