RE: LAST WEEK’S SIYA SPECIAL ON DOWNS…
The Soccer Laduma team made a defence-splitting pass about Downs’ dominance and money issue when they gave us the Siyagobhoza Special feature, headlined, “Insiders reveal Downs not all about the money”. Let me just finish this one off and get a goal for us all. We agree that money has been a big factor in Downs being this successful but not too big a factor. Maybe only 60% of their success is due to money, but on how, where and when to use it, credit to them. Pirates have almost always spent more or less the same money on signing players, but they’ve not received the same return, or even remotely close. Downs have also observed that their main competition on player signings is Pirates. Take nothing away from Chiefs, but they’ve benefited from pre-contracts, cheap players and free agents over the past eight years or so. Pitso came to an ambitious Downs and left the same club as a team to beat. They’ve never looked back and the technical team hasn’t changed much since then. Why? Because they found what they were looking for with Pitso and his technical team. Someone who inspired the club to have a winning culture and playing identity. We’ve seen changes in playing personnel since Pitso’s first day at the Brazilians, but the purpose has always been clear, to create a winning culture and togetherness from management to the fringe players. That’s how big clubs like Real Madrid do things, they understand that there are moments in a tie to turn their fortunes around. They know and believe that if the match is closely contested, they can steal a win. It only shows that hunger makes a big difference. Kwazikwakhe “Mapholoba” Ngcobo, Umlazi
Greetings to you all and happy New Year. Some will wonder why I say happy New Year at this time. Mind you, this is my first letter this year. I wanna say thanks to Soccer Laduma about the clarity on how my beloved Downs became so successful. I hope everyone knows that Sundowns is not all about money. It’s about hard work as Pitso once said this before he
Masebe Qina: Mr. Malatji, some people only got to know you once you became co-owner of Sekhukhune United and the club’s CEO. Has this always been a dream for you?
Jonas Malatji: Yeah, you know, I’ve always had that dream. I used to support Orlando Pirates wholeheartedly. I was a Buccaneer through and through and when the opportunity arose to get involved in the game in this way, I didn’t hesitate. In fact, it was the idea of my brother (Simon Malatji, Sekhukhune chairman) that we should go into the space of football. Coming from Sekhukhune, we have never had any professional football club from the area and we wanted to start something. We wanted to start a club from grassroots level so that we could learn the dynamics. That’s how we started in the ABC Motsepe League after we bought African All Stars, which was based in Tsakane. But we could see that the process of getting into the next level was taking time, and when the opportunity presented itself after we heard that Lawrence (Mulaudzi) was selling his status (of Tshakhuma Tsha Madzivhandila), we thought, “Why not? Let’s go for it and buy the NFD (National First Division, now Motsepe Foundation Championship) status.” You know what they say about God’s timing, it is always the best, and we bought the status, and you know the story of Royal AM that later followed. Today, here we are and we are competing.
MQ: We’ll talk about the Royal AM matter and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruling pertaining to the 2021