Football coaches say the darndest things

Igrew up watching a show called Kids Say The Darndest Things where children between the age of three and eight would be asked questions and expected to give their honest yet cute answers.

The things those kids said would leave you in stitches or sometimes shocked. I was reminded of this when I heard what Mamelodi Sundowns coach Pitso Mosimane had said this week regarding teams who sign players who are out of contract.

I almost choked on my vetkoek yesterday morning when I opened the Phakaaathi website and was greeted by the headline: “Pitso: We don’t want free players”.

Before I even read the story, a few scenarios were going through my head over who he was taking aim at with his outrageous comments.

“We don’t want to be a club that signs players who are free. We don’t want players who are free because they are free. So everything free we must sign? No. When we sign, we want to sign a player in a specific position. We no longer sign because a player is available … and we limit our signings, I think we signed three last year.

“The players we try to sign cost from R12-million or are not available. We want certain players, we have approached the teams. One team mentioned R13-million, the other teams said ‘no, the players are not available, we are not selling’,” is what the reigning African

Sibongiseni Gumbi

Coach-of-the-Year said.

Although he was addressing his team’s recruitment policy, Mosimane couldn’t resist taking a jibe at Kaizer Chiefs who have been known, over the past few years, for signing mostly out-ofcontract players.

It was not the first time Mosimane has said something that left us wondering why he had to go there. He even gags himself sometimes, saying he doesn’t want to talk because he gets into trouble for telling it like it is.

What I know and like about Jingles is that he doesn’t like being pushed around and retaliates. But he also enjoys taking cheap shots at others, which is why he has learnt to take it on the chin when the roles are reversed.

Looking at the calibre of coaches we have this season, we are set for more quotable quotes. Consider the ever-fervent Benni McCarthy added to the mix of already established class of coaches who shoot from the hip.

We already have the likes of Jingles, Kgoloko Thobejane, Steve Komphela and (although no longer here) Muhsin Ertugral who make for interesting post-match interviews because you never know what they will say.

So we are surely set for an interesting season ahead in terms of quotable quotes.

I still remember laughing when Komphela accused his team of playing a kind of football one would expect to watch when visiting other planets like Mars.

“The minute you start playing long balls it becomes scrappy and that’s football from Mars, and we don’t play football from Mars. We play football on the grass and that’s why it is lush and green here,” Komphela once said after a draw with Free State Stars.

Mosimane has already set the ball rolling, and as long as they keep it clean and fun, we will encourage it because it is part and parcel of the game.