Coaches I’ve worked with: I felt pity for Sergio

Sergio dos Santos, the former Kaizer Chiefs midfielder and coach, is someone I’m talking about this week. He’s one of many coaches I feel if they were given enough time, they would have done a lot for South African football! When he joined us, we used to have at least nine players in Bafana Bafana. It made it difficult for him to have a proper programme or for us to adapt to his philosophy because most of us were always away. Nine players are the majority of your starting line-up, so what could he really do? I really felt he was disadvantaged and I’m not questioning anyone’s decision to let him go or anything like that.

Chiefs is a results-orientated team, so there’s no time for sentiments because the supporters need silverware. I felt pity for Sergio because we’d play two games and then we were away on national duty, breaking the momentum. He really tried to accommodate the situation because he knew that six or seven of the nine players would start for Bafana, so whenever we came back, he had a different programme for us as we’d have a game in two days’ time. How do you prepare your team then? That’s why I felt pity for him because he’s such a gentleman and a top coach. So humble that I’ve never heard him raise his voice but he’d tell you about the history of this club. “Ace would carry this team and I believe you have the same ability, son – come on!” would be his words of encouragement to me and he’d do the same to other players as well. He believed in the late Shoes Moshoeu, Steve Komphela, myself, Rudolf Seale, Ace Khuse, to mention just five.