Point taken: but perhaps South Africa's footballing giants need a little bit more than a pair of droopy draws

Of buses and coaches: Mosimane and Komphela

Drawlando Pirates. AmaDrawsi. Just had to make the point. Between them, the two Soweto giants have drawn more than they've won.

And there was not a lot to shout about as the PSL finally cranked back in to action with a pair of droopy draws for South Africa's biggest clubs.

Those long breaks which reduced most clubs to two games in two months certainly don’t help. First the U23s stopped the league for three weeks. Then the Telkom Cup and one league game before the three-week Festive Season.

Fortunately Bafana Bafana didn’t qualify for CHAN, or we’d have to consider a further break.

But hey. We were excited. Local football is back! But when Orlando Pirates failed to raise the Ghost against Platinum Stars the old problems were back too. Coach Eric Tinkler came out with his usual line after the 1-1 draw saying: “There’s no way I’ll resign. I’m not a quitter.”

Then: "If you look at the chances created, we are top. There were 60pts to play for before this game and we are going for all of them. It's difficult to get them but we have that belief"

"Do I feel the pressure? Yes. Nobody wants to fail. I came here to succeed, to win things. A lot of it also has to come from the players.”

All fair enough. All more or less what we’ve heard before. The social network Buccaneers have their knives out; they are after Tinkler’s head but with Irvin Khoza apparently unavailable, it’s unlikely the guillotine will fall soon.

The interesting bit will come when Pirates, now released from African tours after losing the final of the CAF Confederations Cup, get the jump on the four clubs that qualified for continental competition this season.

Champions Kaizer Chiefs and runners-up Mamelodi Sundowns are our African Champions League entrants, and with the league not even at the halfway point, the fixture congestion will surely bite if they get to the group stages.

But looking at their clash on Saturday night, that might not happen. Like it didn’t last season.

They met on Saturday night, the big two. And we were treated to one of the worst first halves I can remember - barely a chance worth mentioning - and though things improved in the second stanza, it was hardly the kind of stuff to frighten the likes of TP Mazembe.

Afterwards, bus-parking coaches Steve Komphela and Pitso Mosimane tried to persuade us it had been a fascinating clash of the giants.

Mosimane described the last 10 minutes as “like pound-for-pound heavyweight boxing, going for the kill” and Komphela assured us both sides tried to snatch it as “the game opened up”.

Fair enough. Tebogo Langerman’s 35m effort hit the post with Reyaad Pieterse stranded. George Maluleke made a hash of his one-on-one which might have been off-side. Khama Billiat forced a good save out of Pieterse on the near post.

But in truth it was dire. Komphela, as Pitso said post-match, sent his team out to defend too deeply. Often he had nine behind the ball, and there was much talk about Christmas being spent studying tactics.

That may or may not be true. What is obvious though is the utter lack of quality on show. While the faithful commentators assured us it was “like a chess game” and “end to end stuff” we watched, head in hands, as crosses were over-hit, control was lost and long balls were resorted to.

Remember, Chiefs and Sundowns are probably the best two teams in the country. Though we are not given figures as they did in the Premier League last week, they probably have the highest wage bills too.

But to see Maluleke’s glaring duff, Wayne Arendse’s free header missed, under-used Sula Matovu subbed after coming on as a sub, both defences hacking the ball long, was neither edifying nor entertaining.

The commentators won’t tell you this. Neither will the coaches. Nor will many in the media, though SuperSport Analyst Zane Moosa had the courage to call Chiefs AmaDrawsi at the finish, as I suggested to him weeks ago.

Truth is, the PSL is slipping behind. We don’t pay for big name foreigners during transfer windows (as I mentioned last week), we have long gaps in our fixture list, the pitch at Soccer City, as Pitso pointed out, was “just sand”.

None of these things help our game, with Bafana Bafana facing two make or break AFCON 2017 qualifiers against Cameroon at the end of March.

By then, I suspect long breaks will be long forgotten. The pressure will be on, particularly at Chiefs, Sundowns, Wits and Ajax.

And, hopefully, the standard will improve. Before fatigue sets in.

Hero or villain? How do we judge Shakes Mashaba after a rousing 3-0 win over mighty Mauritius?

SUPERSHAKES: Bafana coach Mashaba

LOOK! In the sky above Dobsonville! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's SUPERSHAKES! All hail an emphatic 3-0 win over mighty Mauritius hours after half his squad had deserted him. What powers, what magic from our much-maligned Bafana Bafana coach.

But there will be no comic book adulation for Ephraim Mashaba here. Sadly, we cannot abide quite that level of hero-worship after putting three first half goals past the side beaten 7-1 by Ghana a week before.

Yes, Bra Shakes had to cope with a mass withdrawal of players just 48 hours before the game and yes, he had only one training session with this makeshift side before the CHAN qualifier.

But hold on a minute: Bafana played reasonably well with only one dose of Mashaba. Perhaps that's the way to go. Announce the squad a couple of hours before the game and send them out and let them play.

Experienced players who have played under Mashaba say the same as they did when Gordon Igesund was in charge: the training sessions are uninspiring, the team talks are less than adequate. No wonder they wanted to go back to their clubs.

A brief examination of why Orlando Pirates, Bidvest Wits, Orlando Pirates, Ajax Cape Town and Mamelodi Sundowns pulled 12 players out of the squad reveals a deeper malaise than simple club v country politics.

The root cause of last week’s Bafana crisis lies in Mashaba’s insecurity. He chose to keep his strongest squad together after the awful 0-0 home draw against Group M minnows Gambia in an effort to beat Angola in Tuesday’s friendly.

It worked, of course. After endless goalless minutes, Shaky Bafana won the friendly 2-1, ironically on an own goal, though Ayanda Patosi's cunning lob deserved better than that.

But when the players, already in camp for a week in Durban, moved from Cape Town to Johannesburg, everyone knew the big players were supposed to return to their clubs for pre-season, just as we knew Tokelo Rantie would not turn up for the Gambia game after his wedding.

South African football is guilty of poor communication, mismanagement and a first qualifier which will make qualifying for AFCON 2017 tougher than ever with Cameroon and Mauritania to come. We won’t even mention the scramble to find players on Friday and the fact that three of them turned up without passports and were thus rendered ineligible.

So it’s very hard to get too excited about a 3-0 win over Mauritania. Especially when the coach comes out afterwards and complains that his players “need to learn to unlock teams like this, they must be able to score against a side parking the bus”.

But of course, in order to do that, they have to have leadership and tactical guidance from the coach. And of that, there was little sign after a rousing first half in front of a worryingly empty Dobsonville Stadium, right in the heart of Soweto.

Yes, we can celebrate a rare romp against an island nation currently ranked 176 in the world, and as Mashaba rightly said: “We are not scared of them, we do not fear the away leg in two weeks.”

But throughout a week of crisis and turmoil, Mashaba and his media men have failed to explain the full facts of a crisis which left South Africa without a team barely a day before a match scheduled for months.

We were left with a stony silence from Danny Jordaan – the SAFA president who now doubles up as mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay – or PSL chairman Irvin Khoza. Nobody explained why the players returned to their clubs or why the planned use of “fringe players” for CHAN wasn’t implemented until the final hours before Saturday’s game.

In truth, with one point registered at AFCON and first hurdle failures in both the COSAFA Cup and Plate, our game is rapidly sliding backwards. The same old problems are cropping up but most are too scared to explain them away.

Yes, it was great to be 3-0 up at half-time – perhaps even better escape Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula’s ill-judged hype which we were subjected to twice during coverage of the Angola friendly.

And we can celebrate the emergence of two-goal Siphelele Ntshangase and Marc van Heerden - both still officially NFD players with Black Leopards and AmaZulu - as well as the enduring, unbeaten brilliance of captain Itumeleng Khune.

But the truth is, that 0-0 draw against Gambia at home was the important result for Bafana in a turbulent eight day period. Friendly wins and CHAN qualifiers are of no importance. Vision 2022 was what we were promised, but I see no vision at all. Just a blind scramble for available players at the last minute.

I hate being the Grinch who stole CHANmas, but that simply cannot be the way ahead.

GOALLESS BORE: The TRUTH about the Soweto Derby: time to tell it like it is, South Africa

No goals: Baxter and Pirates caretaker Tinkler

THERE are two distinct approaches to South African football. That much was clear on Sunday morning when the newspapers dropped and we were able to truly assess the damage done to our game by yet another dreadful Soweto derby.

On the one hand we had Timothy Molobi in the City Press assuring us: “What a classic game! What a draw! Even though the match ended with zeroes on the board, Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates supporters would have left the stadium a happy lot after what they saw on the pitch.”

Then, in both the Sunday World and the beneath the agonising cricket headlines in the Sunday Times, Tshepang Mailwane revealed the TRUTH: “Stuart Baxter and Eric Tinkler were not playing to win. This is why the Soweto Derby is no longer the entertaining clash it used to be.”


My quote of the day came from Baxter, who assured us: "This was the best derby the crowd will see in a long time. It was great for spectators. Transition after transition." 

But Stuart, 90,000 people don't go to a crunch battle of arch-rivals to see your bloody transitions. They go to see good attacking football, shots on target... and goals.



Anybody who actually appreciates football – and increasingly we get our fix from Spain, England and Germany where teams actually use strikers and play to win – knows that the greatest problem our game faces comes because so many people refuse to tell the truth even when it is staring them in the goalmouth.

Astute analysts know that Baxter, like our national coach Shakes Mashaba and his predecessors Gordon Igesund and Pitso Mosimane, are not the sharpest tacticians in the world. If they were, they’d probably work where their word is law and they can make their own decisions.

Instead, we live in fantasy football world where coaches turn up to find their latest signing is injured and unknown to them. In a world where the greasy palms of agents are more important than encouraging young talent or satisfying the fans. Where players move between Platinum Stars and Orlando Pirates without transfer fees, without argument.

This week, Kaizer Chiefs – 11 points clear in the PSL – will play Maritzburg United tomorrow night in front of a few thousands at the Harry Gwala Stadium. The chasing group - Wits, Mamelodi Sundowns and Orlando Pirates – are also in action, attempting to keep the title chase alive in front of diminishing crowds.

Though Lux September and the PSL desperately attempt to keep it quiet, our shiny “best professional football league on the continent” is about to slip under 6,000 in terms of average attendances for the first time.

There may even be moments of real footballing excitement for the few who actually go to the stadium this week – Wits are at Amazulu and Chippa United travel to the Orlando Stadium tonight, both fascinating encounters – but for as long as we pretend our game is fit, healthy and thriving, South African football will struggle to catch up with the rest of the continent, let alone the world.

We have to accept both Baxter and Tinkler – still only a caretaker at Pirates despite a ten-game unbeaten run – were simply avoiding defeat rather than playing to win on Saturday. Chiefs barely bother to field a striker these days and never quite tell us why David Zulu and Katlego Mphela don’t feature more regularly.

Internationally, after the empty promises about Argentina, Bafana Bafana face Nigeria on March 29 with SAFA President Danny Jordaan telling us May Mahlangu, Kamohelo Mokotjo and Thulani Serero will all be considered for selection. But nobody has really explained why they didn’t play a part in a pointless Afcon 2015.

Politically, we have smug football writers decrying CAF president Issa Hayatou for being too old at 68 to continue to run an organisation he has dominated since 1988. Yet our own Irvin Khoza is 67 and has ruled our game with an iron fist since the early 1990s. And nobody quite knows how he manages it.

There are simply too many unanswered questions.  Too many half-truths and blatant lies. It starts with match reports and crowd figures. It ends with analysts being silenced and coaches being sidelined for telling the truth.

If you see the Soweto Derby as a fantastic game which entertained 90,000 people on Saturday, then I guess you think Mamelodi Sundowns will trounce TP Mazembe and Kaizer Chiefs will stuff Raja Casablanca in the next round of the African Champions League.

And you’d be the kind of person who honestly believes Bafana were just unlucky at Afcon, that goalkeepers are SUPPOSED to be changed every game and our most talented players are SUPPOSED to stand in line behind journeymen who barely get a regular game for their PSL clubs.

Surely, it’s time to tell it like it is?

Momentum: why Mamelodi Sundowns have got Kaizer Chiefs reeling on the ropes

Play it again: Hunt and Baxter clash in the
Nedbank Cup semi-finals too

CHAMPIONSHIP form is an intangible factor in the marathon of a league title race. It is the final, breathless burst which sorts the champion from the contenders in the finishing straight; it often contradicts all that has gone before.

The football-speaking world has to pay attention when Liverpool complete a lung-bursting sprint of 11 wins on the trot; just as South Africans have to sit up and pay attention when Pitso Mosimane’s Mamelodi Sundowns go on a late run of nine successive wins.

It's not over yet, the PSL title race, but with Chiefs needing a perfect finish and praying for a late Masandawana slip-up against SuperSport or Maritzburg, Pitso will be laughing this morning.

The season-long challengers suddenly look leggy (which is exactly what Bidvest Wits coach Gavin Hunt said about Kaizer Chiefs after last night’ 0-0 draw), wearied by a season-long chase for glory: while Manchester City and Chelsea stumble, Brendan Rodgers’ reds have grasped the long-awaited bull by the horns just as Masandawana have capitalised on an AmaKhosi title defence hamstrung by a draining CAF campaign and the final stages of the Nedbank Cup.

Neither Liverpool nor Sundowns have anything else to worry about, just the titles that eluded them for so long. While Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea face Atletico Madrid in the Champions League semi-finals and Stuart Baxter’s AmaKhosi must continue the farce of a CAF Confederations Cup play-off against ASEC Mimosas (they lost the first leg 2-1 on Sunday despite a rare Matty Rusike equaliser late in the game), the new favourites have only long-awaited championship glory to bother them.

Mathematically of course, Liverpool and Sundowns have it in the bag. It’s in Anfield’s hands, with that huge clash against Chelsea to come on Sunday. At Chloorkop, with games against SuperSport United and Maritzburg to finish, full points will guarantee the title; if they draw one and Chiefs win their last three, South Africa’s top two will be level on points with goal difference the deciding factor as it was in 2011 when Orlando Pirates pipped Ajax Cape Town.

A single Teko Modise goal was enough to see off Moroka Swallows at Dobsonville on Saturday night – and Mosimane himself admits: “We should have score another one or two. It’s the same old story. 1-0; 1-0… but we get the results, we get the three points.

 “But we have to the points. We are six clear. Now let’s sit back and watch how they do.”

Exactly. Baxter accepted last night: “If our rivals can win their last two games, I’ll be the first to congratulate them. Our job is just to keep on winning, taking our chances.”

Mosimane, in a season marked by eating grass, sweating blood and weeping real tears of frustration, knows the malaise that grips South African football, a disease which has left the nation’s top scorer Bernard Parker stuck on 10 goals since February when he last score in the league against Bloemfontein Celtic. Pitso grins: “I’ll have to bring on strikers, I need goals, that’s what it will come down to.”

Goals… and momentum. Championship form. Liverpool and Sundowns are showing the elusive formula necessary to grab their respective titles. Can their rivals match it? It’s starting to feel less and less likely.

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FULL LIST OF PSL WINNERS AND POINTS TALLIES on 30-game format

2002-2003: Orlando Pirates 61, Supersport United 55

2003-2004: Kaizer Chiefs 63 (highest), Ajax Cape Town 57

2004-2005: Kaizer Chiefs 62, Orlando Pirates 60

2005-2006: Mamelodi Sundowns 57, Orlando Pirates 54

2006-2007: Mamelodi Sundowns 61, Silver Stars 51

2007-2008: SuperSport United 54 (lowest), Ajax Cape Town 52

2008-2009: SuperSport United 55, Orlando Pirates 55

2009-2010: SuperSport United 57, Mamelodi Sundowns 56

2010-2011: Orlando Pirates 60, Ajax Cape Town 60

2011-2012: Orlando Pirates 58, Moroka Swallows 56

2012-2013: Kaizer Chiefs 57, Platinum Stars 56