No end in sight to Chippa’s musical chairs
Iam surprised there are people who still get shocked when Chippa Mpengesi fires a coach. For me it has become the norm. Whenever a new coach is apppointed at Chippa, I just start the countdown on how long he can survive.
One coach once joked that a coach never unpacks their suitcases because they could be sent packing at any moment. We called Bra Dance on Tuesday afternoon when we got wind he had been fired, but he didn’t know and said he had just come back from training. But later that evening he received the letter telling him his services had been terminated and that he was not to attend training the next day.
I felt embarrassed for him. It may not have been the first time he had been fired by Mpengesi, but this time it was a little too early – he had been there for just two months and been in charge for just three matches.
A draw and two defeats was enough for the big boss to pull the trigger. I think he had been itching to do it for so long he just couldn’t help himself.
And when I saw the picture of Chippa and his new coach Eric Tinkler, I joked that Mpengesi looked like he was already counting down to the day he would sack his new man. What Chippa does to coaches is a shame. But in isiZulu
Sibongiseni Gumbi
we say “ohlab’eyakhe akaphikiswa”, which loosely translated means, “he who slaughters his own cattle cannot be stopped”.
I have said it before that one of the problems with our football is that we have club owners – people who solely own clubs and whatever they say goes. Some have raised a concern that there are no formal organisations which protect the coaches in the country.
When asked about this issue this week, Pitso Mosimane said it would be a good idea not just to protect them from trigger-happy bosses like Chippa but also so we can really have a national identity in terms of our style of play.
If the organisation were to be formed for the reasons Pitso put forward, then I would give it my full support. I know though that there is the South African Football Coaches Association (Safca) which remains unrecognised and has had its fair share of problems since it was formed.
What I think is part of the reason why Safca has not really worked is because we have a very big pool of coaches and very few teams. We have just 16 teams in the Absa Premiership where a coach can earn a decent salary and 16 in the NFD where the money is not that good.
So all these coaches are vying for the same positions and getting them to work together could be tricky. As it is now, someone is polishing their CV in anticipation of Chippa’s next firing. So until the coaches can work together, they will always be victimised by those who sign their pay cheques.
This is why I tweeted earlier this week that Bra Dance must not worry because he might be back at Chippa by January next year when Eric has done his time.