Table of contents for November 2020 in Kick Off

The biggest misconception about new Kaizer Chiefs coach Gavin Hunt is that he is a disciple of skop-skit-en-donder football, who wants his team to hoof the ball forward and whip in crosses for big a target-man to head the ball home. This is not just a misconception about Hunt; other coaches or players who come from Cape Town are often also accused of the same stereotypical thinking, which is sadly not true. And this could also be one of the reasons why he was never considered by Bafana Bafana or any of the so-called ‘big teams’ in the past. While Hunt was able to navigate through this criticism at previous clubs like Bidvest Wits and SuperSport United, the truth is Kaizer Chiefs is a bigger team with much greater expectations.…

Pitso Mosimane has joined Al Ahly. Do you think this is a sign of a growing respect for South African football on the continent? Absolutely and his stock couldn’t be higher at the moment having just won the ‘Treble’. When we have had successful games away on the continent, away in DR Congo, Egypt and Tunisia, the fans are very hostile, but they do appreciate good football. And for me, Sundowns had the most fantastic brand of football under Pitso, they played an exciting, exhilarating style, and you are going to get a level of respect from fans on the continent if you play like that. When we [Bafana] beat Egypt last year, one of the memories from that game was, after their initial shock, the fans gave us a…

South African football has rarely had a time when it has not been under a heavy foreign influence. That was certainly true when the whites-only National Football League was launched in 1959, dominated by expats from Britain. Once multi-racial football began in the late 70s it was still players from England and elsewhere in Europe who dominate the foreign ranks. In 1983 the trend began to change with a sudden influx from Malawi and then the best from Lesotho and Swaziland. Economic expediency trumped the sports boycott. When the political arena began to change towards democracy for all, so Zambians and Zimbabwean began to flood in, and within years the National Soccer League and then the Premier Soccer League had become veritable United Nations of players from around the continent.…

Ajax Amsterdam pulling out of Ajax Cape Town will have been a shock for most football loving fans, but for people who have been in and around the club for the past few years, we knew that this was coming. The Tendai Ndoro situation, which led to Ajax Cape Town getting relegated to the National First Division in 2018, made things worse. In the middle of last year, Ajax Amsterdam were already talking about pulling out of the deal because they have other interests around the world. They were not getting what they were expecting from the partnership. The deal was simple; Ajax Cape Town had to produce players and send them over to Amsterdam and that was not happening. To be honest with you, I don’t know why it…

The seaside city of Swakopmund has its roots engraved in German architecture after the settlers chose it as their prime docking point of entry into what was then known as South West Africa. With a tiny population of just 45,000, it’s a city sandwiched between the Namib Desert and the Atlantic Ocean, and is home to both the township of Mondesa. This is the place located 1,700-kilometres away from Johannesburg where Orlando Pirates’ latest signing Deon Hotto Kavendji calls home. Just like many kids growing up, Hotto was enthusiastic about football and was amongst the group that flocked to the Swakopmund Sports Club from the nearby township of Mondesa, aiming to earn the pride of wearing the kit of the best organised development club in the Erongo region. “How did…

The Premier Soccer League is now awash with faces that are both young and new in the professional game as club bosses use their financial muscles to power their way onto the domestic football terrain. While Sandile Zungu is the freshest face and one who is making his entrance straight into the PSL after using finds from his business interests to buy AmaZulu, there are others who have been around in the game but are also new in the PSL. The boss of Tshakhuma Tsha Madzivhandila (TTM) – the club which bought the status of BidVest Wits – is Masala Mulaudzi. Though he led TTM in the First Division after they bought Milano United in 2017, this is his first season as a PSL club boss. The man from Venda…

Ernst Mtawali was a livewire midfielder and played for the great Bloemfontein Celtic side that won the 1985 Mainstay Cup. During the same season he was voted as the Footballer of the Year and played for Phunya Sele Sele until 1989, when he joined Mamelodi Sundowns. He later had short stints in France and Saudi Arabia before coming back to the PSL to play for the likes of Orlando Pirates and Ajax Cape Town. In this edition of My Dream Team, he picks his best teammates from his career. 1 Goalkeeper Mark Anderson I won the Footballer of the Season in 1985 at Bloemfontein Celtic and Mark won the award the next season. He was a great goalkeeper with superb reflexes. He was consistent right through his career until he…

Aubrey Ngoma admits the Mamelodi Sundowns players were left shocked by the sudden exit from the club of coach Pitso Mosimane, who has taken up the hot-seat at Egyptian giants Al Ahly. Ngoma reveals squad heard about the move through the media, and were left stunned. “There was a lot of shock, no-one expected to be honest,” Ngoma says. “We also saw it in the media, it was not communicated directly to us. “But strange things happen in football and for the players that are still there, they just have to knuckle down and move forward. That is all you can do, these things are not in our control.”…

How did George Lebese come to join you at Colorado Springs Switchbacks? We managed to get George to come over, but he is not the only South African connection. My assistant coach is Kyle Timm, who is the brother of [midfielder] Miguel Timm at Maritzburg United. It has been great to give George an opportunity, as much as I love giving young players a chance, I also love to give older players their opportunities too. George is a player that has had huge success, but there have also been barriers and challenges placed in front of him. He has come over and done very well. I firmly believe you can still help to develop older players and part of that is getting their confidence back, but also having the right…

When Thulani Hlatshwayo arrived at Ajax Cape Town as a teenager, Dominic Isaacs was tasked with providing a brotherly shoulder for the young defender from Soweto. The task was laid by Mike Ntombela, who had been Isaacs’ assistant coach in the Amajimbos in the late 1990s. Isaacs did as he was asked before he left for Kaizer Chiefs in 2008, and upon his return to the club five years later, he partnered Hlatshwayo in the heart of defence. “I remember Tyson as a junior because Bro Mike said I should look after him, especially as he wasa defender like me. He said if the boy is stuck, he must come to me and I said, ‘no problem, coach’. “Thulani was shy and stayed at MrBooy sen’s house, and was always…

Orlando Pirates hasn’t been a popular destination for Namibian players through the PSL era years with Rudolf Bester the only one to have played for the club before Deon Hotto’s arrival. Bester signed a three-year deal in 2011 but spent the last year out on loan at Golden Arrows after battling for regular game time. “I think it is a good move for him to join Pirates because he has played well at all his previous teams,” says Bester, who was teammates with Hotto at Golden Arrows. “He has had two good seasons with Wits, which included winning the KICK OFF Footballer of the Season. I know that he will do well because he is a versatile player who can play as a left-back and also as a left winger,…

KICK OFF: Bantu, first things first, how did you get to Sweden with IK Brage? Bantu Mzwakali: There’s a guy named Raymond Pienaar, he fixed things for me. He’s got a good connection here in Sweden with some of the sporting directors at a few clubs. He’s from Gugulethu and I had a chat with him a long time ago. He asked me if I was interested in trying my luck in Sweden, or one of the Scandinavian countries. It was at the time when I came back from Wits. But when I was set to move I never had a visa. So he advised me to stay at Cape Umoya United for six months because the transfer window was about to close. While I was there, he fixed everything…

As strange as it might sound to the younger generation, it so happened that when Robert Nauseb was signed by Kaizer Chiefs in the winter of 1998 from Namibian club Civics, it was the first time he had a club contract as a way to earn a salary from the game. This was despite the fact that he had already played for three-and-a-half years in the Namibian Premier League for Orlando Pirates and Civics, after having initially spending time with lower division Black Morogo Chiefs from Otjiwarango, where he was born. Back then, as now, Namibian footballers in the domestic league were part-timers, who trained late afternoon after their day job and only earned money when they won sponsored cup competitions. “IF YOU WON FIVE GAMES IN A MONTH THEN…

KICK OFF: Who were your early influences in the game and where did you play? Alan Koch: My dad, Ron, played when I was very young. He was in the semiprofessional era at Clyde-Pinelands in Cape Town, and Chiltern and Stella in Durban. Some of my first memories are watching him play and being mesmerised by him and the game, and so I fell in love with the sport at a very young age. I was six years old when I played for Chiltern, and then I went over to Westville, where I started playing for the first team when I was 16 years old. My first professional team was Reservoir Hills United in the old OK League, which is now the GladAfrica Championship. I signed there when I was…

In his prime, Raphael Chukwu was a monster of a forward who had defenders at sixes and sevens as he led Mamelodi Sundowns to consecutive league titles. His introduction to domestic football was spectacular as he slammed braces two games in a row against AmaZulu and SuperSport United towards the end of 1996, after joining from Nigerian side Udoji United at the persistence of Clemens Westerhof, then the coach of Sundowns. “It was all because of Clemens that I ended up in South Africa,” Chukwu says. “He was my coach and manager so we had an agreement that he would get me a club.” Prior to taking charge at Sundowns in 1995, Westerhof had been a coach of the Super Eagles as they qualified for the FIFA World Cup for…

1 Pfumbidzai was born on Christmas Day in 1994 as the second of three kids. Though he is mostly known by his middle name, his first name is Tapiwa. He has an older sister, Susan, and also a younger one, Samantha, who reside in Johannesburg and Harare respectively. 2 He was born in the Harare township of Highfield, which has fed Zimbabwean football with numerous footballers down the years. The Celtic left-back, who hails from the Engineering section of Highfield, grew up playing against former BidVest Wits, University of Pretoria and Jomo Cosmos midfielder Denver Mukamba, who is from the Lusaka section. 3 After attending Tsungai Primary School in Highfield, his family moved to the dormitory town of Chitungwiza, where he proceeded to complete his secondary schooling at Zengeza 1…