Major worry for the Cape’s NFD teams
THE MOTHER CITY heads into the start of the 2018-19 NFD season with four representatives: Ajax Cape Town, Stellenbosch FC, Ubuntu Cape Town and Cape Umoya United.
Ajax will have their first taste of lower-tier football after they were relegated from the topflight PSL, but still have the respected Muhsin Ertugral as head coach.
While Stellenbosch have new owners, they have placed their faith in last season’s coach, Steve Barker.
Ubuntu managed to narrowly survive their debut campaign in the NFD last season, though they did capture the imagination of football followers with an admirable run in the Nedbank Cup; their head coach, American Casey Prince, will no doubt be keen to improve on last season’s showing.
Umoya are the new Cape kids on the block. Head coach Roger de Sa was at the helm of Platinum Stars last season and he then also fronted a consortium which bought the franchise of the Rustenburg-based club.
With Platinum relegated from the PSL, De Sa and his partners relocated the club to the Mother City and renamed it Cape Umoya United.
De Sa has tons of experience as a coach after spells with Wits, Santos, Orlando Pirates and Ajax.
Now, though, in the hurly-burly of NFD football, he will need all of his coaching nous to negotiate what is a difficult league to get out of. He has, though, been hard at work in preparation for the campaign, which kicks off this weekend: Umoya are in action on Sunday when they take on TS Galaxy in Mpumalanga.
The new NFD club has also tapped into some well-known Cape names to boost their bid for promotion.
De Sa’s assistant is former Ajax and Kaizer Chiefs defender Dominic Isaacs, while the goalkeeping coach is another former Ajax man, Andre Petim.
The big news, though, is that it looks likely that De Sa has persuaded former Ajax and Bafana Bafana striker Nathan Paulse to come out of retirement.
Paulse retired last season and enjoyed some time as a television pundit. The Umoya coach and Paulse, from their time together at Ajax, have always had a close relationship – and it appears that the 36-year-old striker, who is still as fit as ever, wants to be part of the new Cape club’s emergence.
De Sa has also strengthened his defence with the signing of yet another former Ajax player, Roscoe Pietersen.
The 29-year-old, who is former Cape Town City defender Robyn Johannes’ cousin, will provide good experience for De Sa’s youngsters to draw on; Pietersen has played for Chippa United, SuperSport United and AmaZulu.
But a major worry for Umoya, Ajax, Ubuntu and Stellenbosch is the lack of football venues in the Cape.
Athlone Stadium, where most NFD games take place, is only expected to be available sometime next month, hence the fact that all the Cape teams will play away from home on the opening weekend.
Umoya, though, have the option of Parow Park (which is where they are based), while Stellenbosch are looking into the possibility of playing in Idas Valley, a suburb in Stellenbosch. The league, though, still has to inspect and ratify those grounds before official games can be played.
As such, in the meantime, the four NFD clubs and PSL team Cape Town City will have to share Cape Town Stadium for home fixtures.