Phakaaathi.co.za Khune a worthy recipient
Inspirational keeper blows all his contemporaries away.
Let’s be honest, it was pretty much inevitable that Itumeleng Khune would win Phakaaathi’s Player-of-the-Month award for September as soon as he was nominated in last week’s edition.
Such is the popularity of the Chiefs and Bafana Bafana goalkeeper, that even if you lost your mind and threw him into the pool of nominees in a month in which he had let in a succession of howlers, the 30-yearold shot-stopper would have an even chance of winning anyway.
Khune, of course, thoroughly deserved his nomination for September’s award, and is a worthy winner of the gong too, having put up a series of amazing displays for Amakhosi last month, that earned him three successive Manof-the-Match awards in games against Cape Town City, Bidvest Wits and Maritzburg United. A show-reel of saves to deny City’s Sibusiso Masina, Wits’ Daylon Claasen and Amr Gamal, and Maritzburg’s Evans Rusike showed exactly why Khune is the best goalkeeper in South Africa by some distance at the moment. His penalty save from Rusike in the 2-0 win at Maritzburg was probably the best of the lot.
Bafana Bafana badly missed their talismanic keeper in the two defeats to Cape Verde in September, and he showed why this weekend with another inspirational display in the 3-1 win over Burkina Faso. It is not just Khune’s goalkeeping that is admirable, his distribution is amazing too, described as “world class” by Bafana coach Stuart Baxter.
Two of Bafana’s goals at FNB Stadium on Saturday were started by brilliant clearances upfield by Khune.
With Khune, as the man himself explains, it is a case of practice makes perfect.
“Not only when I am at work, even in my spare time in the back yard I go crazy and I look for a toothpick just to distribute the ball to,” said Khune after the Burkina Faso game.
“It takes a lot of hard work, practice and repetition to be that accurate. A lot of players in the PSL say I wish I could play with you just so you could distribute the ball to me. It humbles me.”
Khune’s performance against Burkina Faso has to make him an early candidate for another nomination for Phakaaathi’s Playerof-the-Month award in October, and he will have a chance to show what he can do for Chiefs against top opposition this month as Amakhosi take on Mamelodi Sundowns and Orlando Pirates within the space of four days.