Victor dos Santos
The former Mamelodi Sundowns forward on his time at Chloorkop and what he is up to now.
After being brought to South Africa for trials with Orlando n Pirates, Victor r‘ ‘ Vitinho’ ’ dos Santos ended up sc scoring goals for Mamelodi Sundowns s before a horrible injury u ended his stay at the club. ub. T Though o born in Mozambique, iq he never played e for the country and could have landed a contract act wi with English club Brentford r had Jomo Sono not o been e n otherwise engaged. . KICK OFF’s Lovemore Moyo tracked down the man who is now working in the construction space.
After the turn of the new millennium, in the years when Raphael Chukwu’s struggles in Italy took him back and forth between Bari and Mamelodi Sundowns, there was a need to find a replacement for the Nigerian forward at Chlookop.
Plenty of signings were made as the club sought to find another forward with a similar frame who could play with his back to goals and be effective in the air.
By chance, a forward of Portuguese descent named Victor ‘ Vitinho’ dos Santos found himself at Sundowns as a free agent after having last been on the books of Costa do Sol – the dominant Mozambican club of the early 2000s.
“Do you remember the late Sergio Simao? He was the guy who used to bring players from Mozambique to South Africa,” recalls Vitinho.
“He knew my contract was expiring at Costa do Sol, so he offered to bring me for pre-season in South Africa. He first took me to Orlando Pirates but after three training sessions Augusto Palacios didn’t like me, plus there were issues with the number of foreign players they already had.
“So, Sergio then recommended me to [ Viktor] Bondarenko, who was the coach of Sundowns at the time and knew me from when he coached in Mozambique. ‘Bondas’ immediately asked that I come to train with them since at that time he didn’t have a striker with an aerial presence in the box.
“I was good inside the box, so I went there and started training with them. They liked me and so that is why I then signed for Sundowns. It was that simple,” he explains.
Vitinho quickly transformed himself into the main source of goals for that 2002-03 season as The Brazilians battled through a minefield of instability and chaos in their technical team, and they finished ninth.
But there were no doubts about a forward with 10 goals in 15 starts through his first season.
“It wasn’t an easy season at all because Chukwu came back during the campaign with Carlo Scott already there after having been signed on big money [from Ajax Cape Town]. Then [Ishmael] Maluleke had been league top scorer before he came to Sundowns, and there was also Simba Marumo and the symbol of Sundowns, Daniel Mudau, so it wasn’t easy at all.
“I was helped by my height because I was taller than all of them. My teammates like [Alex] Bapela, [Godfrey] Sapula and Charles Motlohi all knew that I was good in the air, so they knew how to get the ball to me inside the box.
“I was able to finish with my head most times whenever the delivery was good. The plus was that I could also use my body to control and turn in front of defenders and score as well,” he remembers.
Easy money
“I FELT I NEEDED TO SORT OUT MY FUTURE INSTEAD OF HOLDING ON TO THE SOCCER LIFE.”
A take home salary of R17,000 two decades ago, plus signing on fees in the range of R75,000, provided a life of comforts for Vitinho in his first season, which had Bondarenko, Djalma Cavalcante and then Roger Feutmba all coaching at various times.
“The money that I was earning obviously became better, so my life improved as well. At times I feel like money from soccer is easy money, especially with the figures that we hear of nowadays.
“I mean, when you are a professional player you don’t do nothing else besides going to training in the morning and coming back to rest, and then having an afternoon session if need be.
“You don’t go out because there are rules inside the club and when you don’t go out then you don’t spend money. After that, if you win games then you have bonuses. Isn’t that easy?” he chuckles.
“The only issue at Sundowns was that we changed coaches a lot, which made it difficult. I felt the directors needed to have patience with the coaches. We know that it is not easy for the supporters to see the same coach sitting on the bench and the results are not coming, but you need to believe in your coaching appointment.
“At the big clubs, there isn’t so much of players being promoted from the team’s juniors since players are being bought from all over. So it is not easy for the coach. It is better when you get a team built from the juniors, because all they then need is experience,” he notes.
‘Dolezar told me that he had his own players’
Unfortunately for Vitinho, right at the end of the season he suffered a broken leg in a CAF Cup game against CotonSport from
Cameroon. That injury forced him out for the next season, during which he was not even registered with the league.
“The doctor said, ‘with the way you broke your leg, you will continue playing but it will take 7-8 months’. Since I was a foreigner, to register me while I would not play for that long was not ideal, so that is why they didn’t register me.
“I had to sit out the whole season because I was only able to start slight jogging after six months. Then the following season (2004/05), when they started training with Paul Dolezar, he told me that he now had his own players in mind and so didn’t have me in his plans after being out for a year.
“I was loaned out to Silver Stars, but
I didn’t play a lot of games because I continued to struggle with injuries,” he recalls.
With both his loan at Stars and contract at Sundowns expiring simultaneously, he immediately found his way to Greece where he played in the lower divisions for a season in a move arranged by the Tsichlas and Koutroulis families.
Back from Greece after a year, he returned to play for Mpumalanga Black Aces in the lower divisions and then returned to his former club Costa do Sol, before then calling it quits at Atletico Muculmana in 2008.
“I was already 33 and I felt I needed to sort out my future instead of holding on to the soccer life. I started doing my own car spares business, which involved me going to buy in South Africa for resale in Mozambique.
“My brother-in-law then set me up for a job here in Tete [in Mozambique] but then the company started struggling,” he says.
Real life
With his employer going into bankruptcy, he took all the knowledge he gained and started his own company – Victor P Service – which has been operating in Tete for the past six years.
The 46-year-old is now also a father of four and has been using his contacts back in South Africa to grow his business.
“My company is involved in construction and hiring out plant hire equipment. The way I operate is that I have partnerships with big South African construction companies like WBHO, and I do the logistics work in this area, which I am familiar with.
“I source contracts and always know what equipment is needed for any construction job, be it tippers, graders, trucks or whatever. I use my network to negotiate deals, then basically borrow the equipment from the big
companies and hire it out to wherever it is needed.
“I also do finishes to buildings, but not the construction of the houses myself because I live in a country with a currency that is not stable to the US dollar, so I don’t want to run the risk of making losses all the time.
“Business needs to be viable. I don’t employ people full time, but I get workers to do contract work and pay them per project.
“With regards to my life, it is good because I am able to put food on the table. It is different to when I played football because I am now living the real life. The soccer life is like being in the military school.
“You go there to learn and after those 10or 15-years playing soccer, you then move out to face the real life. When you are playing soccer, it is a school where you don’t pay any fees but instead get paid, which is different.
“The trouble with the life that you live when you are still playing soccer is that you are enclosed in that space without so much of a feel of the outside world. You are not exposed to the 9-5 life, where you must grind,” he details.
Nationality issues
Vitinho’s was born in Cahora Bassa, Mozambique but has Portuguese roots with his father having come from the
European country.
The complications created meant he wasn’t able to earn any national team caps and eventually lost out on a move to Brentford.
“I was called three times to the Mozambique squad but issues to do with my nationality meant it was not so simple. The firstfi time it was while I was with Chingale here in Tete, but at that time I was wanted by both Costa do Sol and Ferroviario.
“The guys from the federation were the same guys from Ferroviario, and Costa do Sol knew that if I go to the national team then I will sign with Ferroviario. So, I went to train with the national team but the Mozambique passport didn’t come because the guys at immigration were from Costa do Sol, so they put my documents under the table.
“The second time they said I should denounce my Portuguese nationality and play as a Mozambican, but I said I can’t. Then while at Sundowns, with Bondarenko now the coach of Mozambique, I was called up but broke my leg in the CAF Cup game so I couldn’t come to the national team anymore,” he says.
No caps meant the proposed deal to Brentford, arranged by Jomo Sono while he was still with Costa do Sol, also flopped.
“Jomo used to take players abroad in those days and I went to Brentford, but then it didn’t work out because Bra J was busy with Tico Tico’s move to the USA at the time. So, he eventually didn’t come to London to meet them, even though I had done well at training.
“My other problem was that I didn’t have national team caps because though I was born and came from Mozambique, I am Portuguese. So the deal failed in the end and I then came back,” says the retired left-footer.
For all the joy and fame that he found in playing football, Vitinho would have pursued his studies in Portugal had it not been for his father.
“When I finished my normal schooling,
I was meant to do my tertiary education in Portugal, but my parents got divorced. My father then told me that I cannot go to Portugal because he already had another two kids there and a third will strain his pocket.
“That is when I pursued soccer full time,” he reveals.
“MY FATHER THEN TOLD ME THAT I CANNOT GO TO PORTUGAL BECAUSE HE ALREADY HAD ANOTHER TWO KIDS THERE AND A THIRD WILL STRAIN HIS POCKET.”