Forthright Dumitru‘s void will never be filled

ON ONE winter morning in 2003, the late Ted Dumitru made a grand entrance.

The Kaizer Chiefs Village press room was packed, as we waited in anticipation of who Kaizer Motaung would unveil as the club’s new coach.

There had been wild speculation around the post for some time, but none of it had been correct, and when a bespectacled Dumitru sauntered in, grinning from ear to ear, we wondered why Motaung had decided to go back to the future.

Could Dumitru, who until his return to the Chiefs fold had been in oblivion for a few months, be the man to turn Amakhosi’s fortunes around? After all, Chiefs had last won the championship in 1992.

A few months later, Dumitru duly delivered, ending Chiefs’ long wait for the league title, and then defending it in exceptional fashion the following season. Those two seasons served as an eye opener to some of us. For a change we could see what coaching really entailed.

Not only did Dumitru love his job, he enjoyed the limelight that came with it. A press day at Naturena meant an extended training for the players, where Dumitru would invite journalists to watch, record and report on his session. Today, you hardly get to view a Chiefs training for 10 minutes.

Dumitru was a forthright, thorough coach who was always a step ahead with regard to new coaching regimes and methods. You called him at any hour with an interview request, and he provided wellresearched answers there and then. Journalists didn’t have to go through some overzealous fan masquerading as a media officer to speak to Dumitru.

He abhorred what he termed negative influence in local football, not least if transmitted by supposedly learned overseas coaches. Dumitru once related a story of how, in one game, he overheard a coach telling a talented right back not to cross into opposition territory.

“What kind of coaching is that, where coaches can restrict players from crossing the centre line?” he moaned.

In a recent interview I did for our magazine Sowetan Soccer, Dumitru flayed the Soweto giants – and in particular his former team, Chiefs – for lagging behind Mamelodi Sundowns this season.

“Some of the players there [at Chiefs] do not belong there,” he told me. “The belief that you can improve on mediocrity by bringing [it] to a big club is deeply flawed.”

But for all his forthrightness, Dumitru also had a tendency to embellish the facts. When Bafana Bafana returned with a dismal record from the 2006 Africa Cup of Nations under his leadership, he told us a few years later they were ranked among the best performers.

“I was named the coach of the tournament at that Nations Cup.”

As we all know, this was far from the truth. But nobody could question his analysis. He once revealed how “in a Carling Cup match between Chiefs and Pirates, the ball was lost 257 times in 51 minutes”.

This is how unique Dumitru was. He would readily produce stats no one had, to back up his claims. He practically lived for the game, and in particular, the SA game. Only he could get the best out of wayward players like Scara Ngobese and Junior Khanye.

Rest in peace, Ted, your void will never be filled!