Saga of SA strikers who cannot find the net
Afriend joked that maybe players have nightmares when they have scored a goal in a match. We laughed, but like many jokes, there was some truth in his jest.
In seven league matches this week, only six goals were scored, that means mathematically less than one goal a match. Four of the matches ended in goalless draws and those included games where the country’s supposed biggest teams – Pirates and Chiefs – were involved.
Pirates coach Micho Sredojevic made headlines with his utterances after the match, saying he had been to over 100 countries and South Africa has the worst strikers.
“From what I can see‚ there is no problem with our football‚ but it’s a mental block to put that ball in the net. I have been in 138 coun- tries in the world‚ and I have never seen this in my life. It was like tapping away at a rock,” said Micho.
Having claimed to have been closely following our football even when he was in Uganda, I expected Micho to be fully aware of our inabilities in front of goal. Look at the number of goals our top goal-scorer manages. With just 12, you are easily top scorer and all the teams want you, hoping you can give them the same return.
Our players can play the most entertaining and attacking football, but just can’t finish that off with a goal. Most of the goals that are scored here are not created but come by chance which is why when someone scores a goal like the one Rodney Ramagalela scored against Sundowns earlier this season, it becomes the talk of the town and even a coach like Pitso Mosimane comes out and says
Sibongiseni Gumbi
he has never done it before and probably never will again.
But with the resources we have, such goals should be the norm.
And something I have thought about and never really got anywhere with is how a striker who scored 18 or more goals in the National First Division struggles in the Premiership where some never score even one goal.
Look at Sedwyn George. He scored 21 goals for Royal Eagles last season and was snatched up by Ajax Cape Town. We were all happy for them, thinking they had landed a big catch. But he has struggled to get into the starting team at the Urban Warriors.
I spoke to a few journalist friends and scouts who watched him last season and they were all in agreement that he was a genuine goal-poacher – tall, burly and able to score with both the head and foot. But he is not the only one who has struggled to fit into the Premiership.
Thabiso Kutumela had been making scoring look like child’s play in the NFD before joining Pirates. He is in his second season now but is yet to set the scene alight with just one goal to his credit. There are many other examples.
Sometime last year I did a feature on this and spoke to a former striker in Reason Chiloane who had scored so many goals in the NFD only to struggle at various teams in the top flight. He claimed that the expectations are too much and the player ends up wanting to do more than he knows he is capable of.
And if after two or three games he has not found the back of the net, he begins to question whether he is worthy of being in the division and slowly loses his confidence.
This is why some foreign strikers come and become top scorers because they do not lose the confidence even when things are not happening as they would have liked or expected.
So maybe Micho has found the right diagnosis in that it is a mental problem more than anything but now we are watching with eager anticipation to see if he can find the solution. I hope he does because that can only be good for our football as a nation.