Mphelo makes the most of lucky break

Being a woman in football comes with a lot of challenges, with one of the major ones being having to face-off with people who look down on you because they think woman don’t understand football, says South African Football Association junior national team’s media officer Namhla Mphelo (left).

A football enthusiast – that’s how she describes herself, growing up near Kaizer Chiefs village in Naturena – Mphelo’s love for football was influenced by her surroundings. She has always ensured her football knowledge would broaden as she reads about the game as well as watching football shows on TV.

Despite all of that, having a good background in the game, she still feels people like her remain undermined.

“It’s a very sexist industry, but luckily for me I came here for the work and I really never looked into the fact that I am a woman, I can’t do this or that. But a lot of times it becomes difficult because men tend to think that just because you’re a woman you don’t know football,” said the 30-year old.

“But again, if you have dedicated your whole life to it then you will know your story. There was a point where I knew football more than my counterparts. But these are some of the challenges of being a woman in football generally, you will always be undermined, you will always be looked at in a sexual way. But it’s all about knowing why you are here and knowing your objectives.”

Her path to becoming a Safa media personality started down in KwaZulu-Natal when she decided to pack her bags and study Sports Management at Durban University of Technology (DUT) after she couldn’t get in at the University of Johannesburg having applied for a geology course.

It was at that point that her life would be dedicated to football after her persistence and determination got her a three-year internship with AmaZulu FC in 2007, where she would help out with everything at the club, from serving in the medical room to being a receptionist, before eventually coming back home and ending up at Safa House.

“Being at AmaZulu changed my life, I went there knowing the history of the club very well. I come from Naturena, so I also knew Kaizer Chiefs very well,” she says.

“I came back home (to Johannesburg) after the World Cup, didn’t have work and luckily because of my World Cup grades as a member of the Local Organising Committee at Moses Mabhida, I met Russell Paul at Safa and he had me doing media operations but on a part-time basis. At that time I was available, young, enthusiastic and didn’t have a job. So, I got in and did the Under-20 Africa Youth Championships which Nigeria won at Dobsonville Stadium and from then on I started doing other tournaments that followed.”

“But I needed to get into Safa on a permanent basis and had to look at what would make me special. So, I went to a French school for three years in the sense that most of the countries on the continent speak French, so, if I were to work at Safa it would help.”

After five years at Safa, Mphelo still enjoys doing what she does.