Football out of the courts at last and back on the playing field
● Now that the boardrooms have halted their bungling battles and the courts completed their cases, football can return to its rightful centre stage, the green grass between four white lines.
The fixture list whets the appetite with a mouthwatering prospect coming in the form of a Mamelodi Sundowns-Kaizer Chiefs clash.
It will certainly be different from the funny business of the petrol cup the two teams played out at the FNB Stadium, which was effectively an exercise in trying out new combinations.
Life without Khama Billiat and Percy Tau will pose a challenge for coach Pitso Mosimane. The duo not only played a pivotal part but were crucial cogs of Sundowns’ success of recent years.
In the past Mosimane has been brilliant in bolstering his squad and plugging the gaps opened by the departures of the likes of Bongani Zungu and Keagan Dolly.
Even more significant is the fact that Sundowns have set such lofty standards, they’ve managed a top-two finish for six successive seasons.
If they are not champions (they clinched the championship three times in that period) they are runners-up, which comes with competing in the Confederation of African Football’s Champions League, Africa’s premier interclub competition.
It is an incredible record — no club in the country has ever been that consistent.
It is against this background that the men from Mamelodi march into the 2018-19 season as favourites to defend their fiefdom. Their strength is in depth, bursting to the seams with quality over quantity. By way of illustration, just one position, that of central midfield,
They aren't the grab-thegame-by-the-scruff-ofthe-neck sort of players
hammers home this point.
There Mosimane is stocked with four internationals in captain Hlompho Kekana, Tiyani Mabunda and new addition Andile Jali reuniting with his fellow militant midget Oupa Manyisa. Poor Lucky Mohomi has battled to break into the starting XI since joining from
Free State Stars and has fallen further down the pecking order. This embarrassment of riches stands in stark contrast to the thin-to-the-bone Kaizer Chiefs who only have Willard Katsande as a real workhorse alongside George Maluleka, Wiseman Meyiwa and Khotso Malope. They are not the grab-the-game-by-the-scruff-of-the-neck sort of players.
Orlando Pirates are also armed and dangerous in that position.
Coach Milutin Sredojevic will have a headache choosing from Xola Mlambo, Musa Nyatama, Asavela Mbekile,
Marshall Munesti, Gladwin Shitolo and Abel Mabaso.
Upfront, Mosimane is already cooing over Guston Sirino, whose man-of-thematch performance against AS Togo-Port in the Champions League on Friday night showed he is ready to help the Yellow Nation banish Tau’s memory to the periphery.
New Chiefs coach Giovanni Solanis will pin his hopes on Billiat and Leonardo Castro reviving the CB part of the now defunct fearsome CBD they formed with Dolly in their prime at Sundowns. Sredojevic will hope that Augustine Mulenga and Justine Shonga will do for the club what they do so well for their country, Zambia, forming a lethal nettearing front-two combination.
Bidvest Wits signed dime-a-dozen players last term and were witless, soulless and ran around like intoxicated zombies. Yes they saved face by winning the Telkom Knockout but Gavin Hunt cannot argue that his Clever Boys failed the rest of the campaign with flying colours. Can fellow silverware collectors Free State Stars, the Nedbank Cup winners, repeat their fairy-tale? Time will tell whether the showing of Fadlu Davids and his Maritzburg United soldiers was a flash in the pan or the foundation for bigger things to come. Welcome back to top-flight football to Highlands Park and Black Leopards. May your stay in the league this time be longer than that of a teabag in a cup. Let the show begin.