Tabla de contenidos para May 2022 en Kick Off

It’s that time of the year again when we ask you, our loyal reader, to vote for our annual KICK OFF Footballer of the Season. Since 1994, when Orlando Pirates striker Marks Maponyane won the award after helping his team win the league, it has always been our tradition to ask the readers to vote for the best player from the current campaign. The only time we did not run the competition was during the 2019/20 season when the PSL season was temporarily suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With so much uncertainty on whether the campaign was going to be concluded or not, we made the decision to suspend the voting and brought it back the following year. Kaizer Chiefs players won the award six times in the first…

GOOD MONTH FOR … MAMELODI SUNDOWNS Back-to-back victories over Al Ahly is the stuff of dreams for Mamelodi Sundowns as they became the first side ever to secure 16 points in the group stages of a CAF Champions League campaign. BAD MONTH FOR … BENNI MCCARTHY There is very little loyalty left in football and despite his heroics in leading the team to a shock second place in the 2020/21 season, McCarthy was axed by AmaZulu after mixed form in which they had to deal with a maiden CAF Champions League campaign. ALSO LAST MONTH… • Mamelodi Sundowns name Norwegian Flemming Berg as the club’s new sporting director. • Former Orlando Pirates midfielder Mark Mayambela retires from professional football at the age of 34. • Kaizer Chiefs are slapped with…

Rivaldo Coetzee A litany of injuries has already thrown off course a career that should long have been sparkling in European club football rather than in the South African Premiership. A troublesome toe injury cost him a change to go to Glasgow Celtic and his entire first season at Sundowns and has now expanded to a longer list. Hernia surgery retarded the end of this season for the 25-year-old, but he was so strong at the start of the campaign that he is an easy selection on the shortlist of the Footballer of the Season. Multiple man of the match awards in Sundowns’ unbeaten start to the campaign attest to that. If an observer of the South African league was asked to single out one player, still attached to a…

Abram Majok’s international career has been hanging in the air for the past three years when he was first called up for the South Sudanese national team. He turned down the call-up at the time as he was earning caps with the Australian Under-23 squad. When he ultimately accepted the call-up from his native country last year against Jordan, the game didn’t go ahead after an outbreak of covid in their camp. He has only then made his debut recently against Djibouti in the 2023 AFCON qualifiers. “I’m sure you are aware that you remain eligible until you make your senior debut,” Majok says. “I played for Australia at junior level but now that I will be 24 soon, I chose my roots in my father’s land. I prefer to…

Domestic football has for years imported Brazilians, especially through the PSL years, with some of them going on to play in the First Division. Though there is no disputing Brazil’s standing in the global game, some of the quality that has found its way toSouth Africa has been questionable. Most of the Brazilians coming into the PSL have struggled to last three years, with only a handful like Nascimento stretching their time up to five years. “I enjoyed my time in South Africa and even scored a goal that won us atrophy,” says Vinicius da Silva, who netted the goal that won Moroka Swallows the 2009 Nedbank Cup. Just like plenty of his Brazilian colleagues, Da Silva was forever in need of medical attention and didn’t even play in the…

ERLING HAALAND Date of birth: July 21, 2000 Current club: Borussia Dortmund Previous clubs: Bryne, Molde, Red Bull Salzburg 5 While in the books of Austrian side Red Bull Salzburg during the 2019/20 season, Erling Haaland became the first teenage to score in five consecutive UEFA Champions League matches. 9 During the 2019 FIFA Under-20 World Cup, the Norwegian forward scored nine goals during the 12-0 drubbing of Honduras. Haaland’s strikes were enough to secure him the tournament’s Golden Boot award but sadly his country failed to qualify for the knockout stages of the tournament. 29 During his 18-months stay with Austrian side Red Bull Salzburg, Haaland scored an impressive 29 goals in all competitions. His goalscoring form attracted interested and saw him move to German Bundesliga side Borussia Dortmund. 23 During…

1 Goalkeeper: Avril Phali I played with many great goalkeepers, and they helped me a lot in my career. Avril was a great leader at Cosmos; he didn’t do things because he wanted attention. As defenders we had to protect him, and he gave us the spirit to keep clean sheets. We knew that if we scored one goal it might be enough because we had someone reliable behind us. 2 Right-back: Sammy Magalefa I played with Sammy at Cosmos. Some right-backs are good at just defending, while some could attack. But to find one that could do both is not easy. Sammy was an allrounder, he could play each role equally well. 3 Left-back: Onismor Bhasera Bhasera has an engine of a Ferrari. He runs up the field to…

Having been scouted by Eric Tinkler at the Nike Chance competition at the age of 15 in 2012, Jethren Barr would never have imagined that he would make his senior debut for Bidvest Wits less than a year-and-a-half later. The Durban-born goalkeeper was snapped up at academy level by the Clever Boys and had been training with the first team when an unprecedented injury crisis led to him being fast-tracked into the matchday squad. In a matter of months, Wits lost Ryan Harrison to a fractured finger, Jackson Mabokgwane suffered a knee injury and Steven Hoffman broke his ankle, leaving veteran Emile Baron as the only recognised ‘keeper ahead of Barr. The unthinkable then happened during a league clash against Orlando Pirates in April 2013 when, in the dying moments…

What happened with those that joined Kaizer Chiefs from clubs based outside the African continent? Since Bernard Parker’s return from spells in Serbia, Greece and Holland, Kaizer Chiefs have made it a habit to have arrivals from abroad in almost every season. Their most recent signing who has come in after a spell overseas is Keagan Dolly. Since coming in after a stint in France, Dolly has delivered on what is expected of him, scoring goals and adding assists. Prior to him was Kearyn Baccus, who arrived from Australia but hasn’t really lived up to expectations to justify why he was recruited from as far as Down Under. Serbian forward Samir Nurkovic has only had one season in which he has ticked all the boxes from the three that he has spent…

Another Mweene, who is a goalkeeper, has emerged in recent years and has already played in Portugal after stints with University of Pretoria and Real Kings. “His name is Bradley, and he is my nephew,” Kennedy Mweene tells KICK OFF. “I’m glad that the Mweene name won’t disappear because he is pushing, even though I feel the weight of the name puts him under strain at times when people keep comparing him with me. “We are different characters, and he has his own career to build. He is a good keeper now playing for Nkana FC in Zambia. I’m doing a lot of mental work on him because he is not strong in that space. “Don’t worry, you will see him soon,” says the Sundowns keeper.…

The second Sudanese civil war that lasted 22 years from 1983 to 2005 is recorded as one of the longest in the world and ultimately went on to result in the independence of South Sudan six years after the war ended. Two million people died, with civilians accounting for most of those, while another four million people in South Sudan were displaced. For one family that had fled to the Kakuma refugee camp in neighbouring Kenya, set up by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), they had to deal with the arrival of their bundle of joy through the tensions of their stay there. The little boy was named Manyiel Riel ‘Abraham’ Majok. “The civil war in Sudan meant my parents fled to Kenya and settled there as…

KICK OFF: Let’s go to the beginning. How did you join Kaizer Chiefs? Howard Freese: My association with Chiefs dates back to my high school days. I was at a boarding school and there were these hostels where one would be known as Swallows and another as Orlando Pirates. I happened to be at Chiefs hostel. In those days, there was no television and we huddled around a transistor radio and listened to commentary by legendary Koos Radebe as he would paint a colourful picture about the mighty Amakhosi. So Koos Radebe influenced you into joining Chiefs? It did not happen overnight. When I graduated from high school, I came to Johannesburg to play for Chelsea in the Federation Professional League. It was also during this period that I joined…

Jethren Barr lists his influences as a young goalkeeper and those who have helped him develop his game to this point. “The biggest influence a goalkeeper coach had on my career was Andre Arendse. He was the coach who worked with me from a young age, and I think that’s where most of your development comes in,” he said. “He’s very good with younger goalkeepers, as he is with older ‘keepers, and I owe a lot of the technique that I developed in my younger years to him. From a goalkeeping point of view, I think most of my technique is very good and very sharp and you can see I’ve been well coached, and I have to credit to him for that. “I also grew up watching a lot of…

Over a decade has passed since Lucky Qaba decided to call time on his playing career, yet his voice still trembles when talking about how his career came to an end. Qaba had his back on the ropes in the five years of his career after he tore his knee ligaments during a topsy-turvy time at FC AK in the 2006/07 season. After making his debut as a teenager in 1998/99, his appearances floated in single figures through most of his time in the professional game, be it at Wits University, Mamelodi Sundowns, Zulu Royals, Black Leopards, FC AK or Batau. Battling for game-time ended up being the definition of his career, which started on a bad note when he couldn’t feature for the national Under-17s due to an administrative…

The return of supporters to the stadium is a great thing for South African football because our fans have been dying in anticipation of the decision made by the government and the PSL. It’s been two years and that is way too long when you think about it. I remember attending a Soweto Derby recently as a TV commentator and it was so strange to see one of the big matches in Africa played in front of an empty stadium. It was like attending a training session – no noise, no excitement building up to the match, everything was just dead. I remember during my time as a player, every time we played a Soweto Derby against Kaizer Chiefs you will see fans waving flags from the team hotel. Driving…