It’s a mystery how Ernst gets into the dugouts
HOW the heck does he keep on getting a gig in this country?
What is it about him that is so obvious to club chairmen who keep giving him the gig?
Whatever it is, it is invisible to the observers who remain oblivious of the man’s claim to coaching fame.
Maybe he possesses the magic of putting together a mother of all presentations. Maybe he has the prowess to present it with pinpoint German precision and poetic persuasion so that it gets him the job without hesitation.
Who knows, maybe Ernst Middendorp has a hotline to the head honcho of warlocks who works wonders.
No one is accusing him of dabbling in sorcery in the blanket of the night.
But think about it for a second. Middendorp walks from one job (Maritzburg United) to another (Bloemfontein Celtic) in a strange spin of a coaching merry-go-round.
Celtic chopped him in December and Chippa United liberated him from the unemployment queue the following month before he could even finish filling in the unemployment insurance fund forms.
The Port Elizabeth-based club, Chippa United, has been in free fall since the German tactician came to town.
“What can messiah Middendorp do when he has no material to work with?” ask the sympathisers.
It is an argument dismissed as flimsy by the detractors. They correctly point out that the Chilli Boys were comfortably cushioned in the top eight when Roger Sikhakhane was strangely flushed down the tube in December.
A rigmarole of reasons, so senseless they made sense only to trigger-happy club owner Chippa Mpengesi and his own shadow, were advanced for jettisoning Sikhakhane.
The same Sikhakhane who, following a stormy start to the season — three losses, a win and a draw in five matches under Serbian Kosta Papic — steered the ship to calmer waters.
Then Mpengesi’s fingers got itchymalitis.
You are forgiven for thinking that Mpengesi was an Azanian People’s Liberation Army soldier, what with his one coach, one bullet policy.
The one coach who has been hit by many of Mpengesi’s bullets and whose body has more holes than a Swiss cheese as a result is Sikhakhane.
With the club supporters toyitoying against Middendorp, the selfsame Sikhakhane is waiting in the wings to return to the poisoned chalice that is the Chippa United coaching job.
We’ve been down the road so many times before: Mpengesi and Sikhakhane will rekindle their romance.
We will hold a collective breath on how long the love you today and hate you tomorrow relationship will hold.
Worse, when Sikhakhane returns, he will have to work with Peter Koutroulis and Mich D’Avary, the chief executive and technical director he labelled as racist and accused of plotting his failure in favour of hiring Middendorp. Clowns United? This Chippa circus is so hot it needs no chilli.
As for Middendorp, perhaps the time has come to ask: why do teams suddenly start performing like real soccer sides as soon as he is given the heave-ho?
Look at Celtic, four straight wins shot them to sixth spot before yesterday’s game against Polokwane City.
He arrived at Kaizer Chiefs when the club was on a high of back-to-back league titles won with definitive panache and pizzazz under Ted Dumitru.
Amakhosi were barely recognisable when Middendorp was done and dusted with them and departed after two years of what can be best described as a demolition job.
Mpengesi’s men have barely marched forward under Middendorp. On a six-month contract, he has been hit for a six in six matches: three defeats and two draws in the league and a Nedbank Cup exit do not scream the stuff of legends.
But even with that record, the man will charm another club chairman into giving him a gig.
Maybe he has a hotline to the head honcho of warlocks who works wonders