When will Chippa’s trigger-happy boss stop the firing?
Surely it won’t be long now before Siviwe ‘‘Chippa” Mpengesi earns a welldeserved place in the Guinness Book of Records. Mpengesi has developed a reputation as an incredibly impulsive soccer boss and his penchant for sacking coaches without considering the consequences is about the closest thing to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable behaviour on Twitter.
Coaches are on the endangered species list at Port Elizabeth-based Chippa United and it is no exaggeration to suggest that Mpengesi fired some of them before the ink had dried on their contracts.
As the owner of a modest Eastern Cape club that finished 10th on the final Premiership standings on the last day of the season in April, Mpengesi and United should not be part of the national discourse.
COACHES ARE ON THE ENDANGERED SPECIES LIST AT PORT ELIZABETH-BASED CHIPPA UNITED
The spotlight should be solely on the event that officially brought down the curtain on the Premier Soccer League campaign — Tuesday night’s annual end-of-season awards — and yet here we are furiously discussing the notoriously trigger-happy soccer boss’s latest antics.
Gasps could be heard across the country on Sunday evening after it emerged that Mpengesi had suddenly rehired Dan Malesela as the soccer club’s new coach.
Malesela’s appointment came as a complete shock to the nation’s soccer lovers because Mpengesi had announced only 12 days earlier that he’d handed the same job to Serbian Vladislav Heric.
Heric, as you will recall, stepped in as caretaker coach in March after Teboho Moloi was shown the door.
And after staving off relegation and leading United to a 10th-place finish, we are now told that Heric suddenly developed an uncontrollable urge to step away from the limelight and rather run the club’s development project.
Seriously folks, these guys expect us to believe that Heric happily agreed to open the way for Malesela to return to the job after the Serbian had done the dirty work of saving the side from relegation?
Malesela’s return makes no sense because the man was fired by the selfsame Mpengesi eight months ago for nonperformance. Hell, Malesela was so upset after he was dragged from the coaching seat kicking and screaming that he said at the time he would never set foot in Port Elizabeth again.
“I don’t think I’ll be back in PE ever again, I don’t think I’ll do that. I will not degrade myself to that level,” an incensed Malesela said after he was fired following a 3-1 home defeat to Baroka in September 2017.
And yet the same man now says it only took one meeting with the club’s officials to convince him to return to the Eastern Cape.
‘‘I am very excited to be back at Chippa United,” the seemingly deliriously happy Malesela said on Monday. “It wasn’t a difficult situation. ‘‘We never even debated for too much. We just had one talk and that was it.”
The nation’s soccer lovers took to social media after the confirmation of Malesela’s return to warn him to keep his suitcase packed and close to his front door.
Given that he is already familiar with his trigger-happy boss’s itchy finger, it would be advisable for him to avoid big purchases and remember the many victims of that notorious revolving door, which includes Ian Palmer, Mark Harrison, Wilfred Mugeyi, Roger Sikhakhane, Manqoba Mngqithi, Julius Dube, Farouk Abrahams, Moloi and Heric.
The reality is that United coaches do not sleep peacefully at night even when they are doing well and it remains to be seen just how long Malesela will remain at the helm before his boss develops that familiar itch again.