Don’t be surprised when Special One rides Bafana again
South African football’s own Special One, Pitso Mosimane, will become Bafana Bafana coach a lot sooner than many realise. This might come as a surprise because Mosimane has kept a very wide berth between himself and the job out of which his South African Football Association (Safa) employers unceremoniously forced him in June 2012.
Granted, the Special One has told all who care to listen he’d rather stick it out at Mamelodi Sundowns than return to a job in which he’d be about as safe as a pet hamster sharing accommodation with a starving black mamba.
But if you understand the passion that drives one of the hardest working coaches in African football, Bafana are a frontier unconquered by a man named the best mentor on the continent a few months ago.
He has unfinished business at Safa House and if his recent words to this columnist are anything to go by, Mosimane has big fish to fry in the bigger scheme of things.
I last saw Mosimane a few days ago when Sundowns had just beaten Morocco’s Wydad Athletic 1-0 at Lucas Moripe Stadium in Atteridgeville in an African Champions League first-leg quarterfinal that the coach felt they should have won by a comfortable margin.
But the precarious position Sundowns found themselves in going to the away second leg in Rabat, Morocco, on Saturday night did not stop Mosimane from taking on a responsibility that seemed a tall order.
Sundowns would be happy, Mosimane said, to pick up the baton dropped by Bafana and the Springboks and fly the South African flag on the international stage.
Remember, Bafana embarrassingly lost back-toback 2018 World Cup qualifying matches against Cape Verde and their chances of making it to the global showpiece in Russia are hanging by the thinnest of threads.
And not to be outdone‚ the Boks took things down the same road when they were humiliated 57-0 by the All Blacks in New Zealand.
Mosimane felt it was his and Sundowns’ responsibility to remedy the situation in their Champions League quarterfinal.
“This [game against Wydad] is a national agenda, huh?” Mosimane said. “That is what I told the players. I said to them: ‘This is a national agenda. This is not a PSL match against Free State Stars.’
“You must be joking. You have to be patriotic. You have to show the country that we might not do it with Bafana‚ but we have got no reason at Sundowns not to carry the national flag.
“And we have done that. If we do not win the Africa Cup of Nations with Bafana‚ this [the Champions League] is our Nations Cup and we must win the Champions League.”
But the slender 1-0 lead at home in Pretoria proved to be costly as the Moroccans eventually won the two-legged quarterfinal tie 3-2 on penalties, and this, after Wydad spent the week exhibiting disgraceful and unsportsmanlike conduct.
The result may have stopped Mosimane from defending the Champions League title he won last year, but the man will be back. You can count on it.
He wants another Champions League title and he said earlier this year that it was this burning ambition that partly motivated his decision to turn down the Bafana coaching job that became vacant after Ephraim “Shakes” Mashaba’s was sacked.
But to those who understand the man’s ambition, Sundowns are the final bus stop before he attempts to get back on the Bafana horse that threw him off five years ago.
So, frankly, the coach’s return to Bafana should not be a surprise.
Follow Ntloko on Twitter at @ntlokom.
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