IT'S THE ENDO THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT: Sundowns dreams shot down in Japan

AT FAULT: Mamelodi Sundowns Ugandan
goalkeeper Denis Onyango

FOR a delirious 45 minutes on Saturday, KaboYellow fans had every right to believe they were headed to a glorious final against mighty Real Madrid at the FIFA Club World Cup in Japan. Then came 45 minutes of heartbreak, a second half exposing all that is wrong with South Africa football.

The first half at the Suita City stadium was a dream. Percy Tau was rampant, Khama Billiat had a couple of chances - one from all of four yards on the slide - and Pitso Mosimane looked secure in his Champions of Africa castle with the big back door.

Hitoshi Sogahata was the villain of the piece for Sundowns, who had NINE shots to Kashima’s NIL in those fantastic first 45 minutes. Bizarrely, FIFA had captioned the scoreline “ZSC” for Masandawana (obviously they thought Egyptians Zamalek had made it!) and didn’t correct in to “SUN” until the 2nd half… and by then, the fantasy was fading.

Sogahata, who has played all his life at the Antlers, is a mature 37, he’s played four times for Japan since 1998 but 462 times for his club. Three great saves kept Sundowns goalless, and then there was THAT miss from the usually lethal Zimbabwean Billiat, who put Tau’s excellent cross wide from inside the small box.

MISTAKE! Sundowns were dubbed "ZSC"
throughout the first half by FIFA

At half-time, optimism was sweeping the nation. With the game on SABC thanks to StarSat’s last-minute climb-down on exclusive coverage, the social networks were buzzing. Pitso was a genius. Tau was a lion, Dolly was more popular than Barbie. Onyango hadn't been tested in goal.

But from the first touch of the second half, the Antlers showed the value of a good team talk, and a touch of tactical acumen.

With their wing-backs tucking in, the midfield was reclaimed by the Japanese, Pitso might have seen it before me but he didn’t react. Not until THE ENDO OF THE WORLD, with Yasushi Endo picking up a Mu Kawasaki cross and beating Sundowns’ keeper Denis Onyango.

When I say it beat him, it wasn’t a pretty sight. The Uganda player of the year and PSL goalkeeper of the season made a hash of the close-range shot, it wriggled out from underneath his writhing body and was actually put in by his own hand/head reflex movement.

Shocking, particularly with Sogahata producing a near-perfect 90 minutes at the other end.

CORRECTED! But Sundowns went in to
 a serious decline in the second half

But there was worse to come. Pitso finally threw on Zwane, but it was already too late. Then came Liberian striker Antoine Laffour when Sundowns appeared to finally realise they had to score to survive.

But there was no great urgency. No radical change of shape. The Antlers had Sundowns by the horns. In a dramatic reverse of the first half, Sundowns barely mustered a threat on goal.

And when Kanazaki added a goal of his own with the Downs defense all over the place, the sinking feeling became titanic. All the shortcomings of South African football had been ruthlessly exposed. Poor finishing, late changes, lack of fitness, tired defending and we’ll have to say it again POOR FINISHING.

We got the usual afterwards from Pitso Mosimane, whose PSL and African champions are starting to develop a habit of inconsistency in recent weeks.  

Clearly unhappy, the post-match interview was mercifully short: “We played very well against a very good team. Obviously you could see our finishing was not very good in the first half. They took their chances and we didn’t.

“Disappointed? What do you mean? It’s football. We are professionals. For us it’s a very good learning curve. They passed very well.

“We are learning, we did well, we just couldn’t finish.”

And captain Hlompho Kekana, who simply disappeared in the second half, basically respected his coach: “If we’d taken one of the chances we’d created, the game would've changed. We must take lesson out of this game.”

Lessons? Learning curves? No. The FIFA Club World Cup doesn’t come along regularly for South African football. We needed clinical finishing, decisive substitutions, a solid goalkeeper.

But hey, at least they got to Japan. They play Korea's Jeonbuk on Wednesday morning in a 5th/6th play-off game that could earn the players plenty to add to their African Champions League bonus.

FIFA are offering  $1.5m for fifth and $1m for sixth. So the difference is $500,000. R7.5m. Nearly as much as Cape Town City FC won for their Telkom KO victory against SuperSport United on Saturday.

The Antlers go on to play Nacional from Colombia, with Real Madrid likely to be their final opponents. Sundowns didn’t even get close to Cristiano Ronaldo. It's enough to make a weepy nation howl.

THE LITTLE LION: Percy Tau heads to Japan on top of the world

CHAMPIONS OF AFRICA: Percy Tau (front right) can't quite believe it!

THE PERCY TAU PHENOMENON IS REAL. There was a time, not a year ago, when the only thing the little lion at Mamelodi Sundowns had in common with Lionel Messi was his diminutive stature.

But with Leonardo Castro suffering that long-term ankle injury, Tau returned to the regular starting line-up during Pitso Mosimane’s fabulous “back-door” African Champions League triumph and he has NEVER looked back.

He was the little lad sitting looking bemused during the celebrations in Egypt after KaboYellow were crowned continental kings. He no longer had to bring a cushion to matches for a long stint on the bench. He was a major part of a phenomenal success.

It was all too much for the 22-year-old who only got his matriculation certificate last year.

Vital goals in Africa have been followed by great goals in domestic competition. His second goal on Saturday against Free State Stars was a thing over wonder, nearly as spectacular as THAT last-gasp overhead equaliser from Baroka’s Oscarine Masuluke against Orlando Pirates.

Tau picked up the ball near the halfway line, cut a swathe through the falling Stars defence and put it through the legs of a defender and the goalkeeper to make it 4-1 to Sundowns on a day of serious confidence-building.

On Monday, Sundowns flew off to Japan for the FIFA Club World Cup with their heads held high. The shock defeat against Cape Town City on Wednesday was forgotten. Sundowns can go top of the PSL if they win all their games in hand.

Real Madrid and the rest of the world’s continental champions await them in Japan but Percy has an old head on those young shoulders. After yet another Man of the Match award, he said: “We did well, I just try to do what I know. The focus is on my football, nothing else.

”Yes, I do miss chances, but I’m happy to score two today.”

Coach Mosimane is nearly breathless in his praise: “Our boys, sometimes they can be naughty. We could have scored more. Percy at the moment is unbelievable. He’s scoring goals, and he’s growing, growing all the time.”

With Castro back in the starting eleven for the first time, Tau maintains his spot next to the CBD as the team heads for Japan. It gives Sundowns a lovely, free-running spirit to have Castro, Khama Billiat and Keagan Dolly up there with Tau.

Up to this point, general consensus indicated Tau, an academy product born in what was once known as Witbank, was way behind Dolly in the array of young South Africans who could break in to the top five leagues in Europe.

For years I questioned Dolly’s exclusion from the Bafana Bafana senior set-up. The same can be said for Tau, who never caught Ephraim “Shakes” Mashaba’s agent-jaundiced eye with the national squad.

But with Dolly’s road to Olympiacos in Greece blocked by stubborn Sundowns officials insisting the R10m buy-out clause in his contract was “a mistake” it could be Tau, “lion” in English, will be the man to poach in Japan.

He has the talent. He has the personality. He has the touch. South Africa longs for a player other than Sunderland’s elderly Steve Pienaar playing in Europe’s “Big Five” leagues. For our young lion Percy Tau, as Sundowns fans say, the Sky is the Limit!

FIFA Club World Cup final: African history in the making.... thanks to a madman!

The self-confessed madness of one man has put TP Mazembe on the verge of making African football history tomorrow when they take on European Champions Inter Milan in the final of the FIFA Club World Cup.

Moise Katumbi is that 46-year-old madman, and he’ll be the proudest man at Abu Dhabi’s superb Zayed Sports City Stadium. The governor of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Katanga province says himself: "People can call me mad but if they do, they are going to have to call plenty of people mad. Those who love cars spend millions on them, those who love women spend millions on them and holidays, while others are dazzled by gold, diamonds and the like.

"Football is my hobby so I try to budget all the money I make so I can put it into Mazembe - you have to love the game because you can't do this if you don't.

"Beating Brazil’s Internacional 2-0 in Tuesday's semi-final made me forget all the effort I've ever invested into the team. I've even got my little boy, who is 17 months old, singing Mazembe songs.”

The chairman isn’t the only madman in the ranks. In May this year, two of their key players, Trésor Mputu and Guy Lusadisu, were banned for months after a tournament in Rwanda saw the referee felled by a karate kick. Undaunted, they’ve gone further than any other African club this season.

Ironically, Inter Milan’s 3-0 win over Korea’s Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma on Thursday night means Mazembe – the first club outside of Europe or South America to reach the final - will have to eclipse one of Africa’s greatest footballing sons, former Barcelona striker Samuel Eto’o, in tomorrow’s showdown.

Katumbi, whose squad boasts 12 players from the city of Lubumbashi in the mineral-rich Haut-Katanga province, says: "My vision when I joined this club was to make Mazembe one of Africa's strongest teams and that's why I've worked so hard to make it happen. I grew up in a big business family in the province, so learned the challenge of making something work early on."

A mining magnate who has diversified in to fishing, transport and television, Katumbi took over the club in 1995, when the Lubumbashi club could only cling on to dimly remembered Congo championships in 1967 and 1968. Since then, five League titles and the last two African Champions League finals have gone their way.

Even when they were 5-0 up after the first leg of this year’s ACL final agains Tunisia’s Esperance, Katumbi insisted on taking his team to Europe to prepare for the second leg. And he insisted they would do better in Abu Dhabi this year than they did in last year’s Club World Cup, when they were beaten by South Korea’s Pohang Steelers and Auckland City from New Zealand. He was right.

But that kind of money-is-no-object support doesn’t come cheap. This year, the Roman Abramovich of African football announced he would spent $10m on keeping his beloved team together – and on top of that he has paid for flights and hotels for the trumpet-blowing band of 150 fans who have followed their Crows to Abu Dhabi.

And under his control, Mazembe have flourished, winning five league titles in the last decade as well as the last two editions of the African Champions League.

While we know all about Italian giants Internazionale and their multinational galaxy of European conquering stars, the Crows look to now-unbanned captain Tresor Mputu Mabi, lethal strikers Mulota Kabangu and Dioko Kaluyituka plus inspirational goalkeeper Muteba Kidiaba in their historic quest. And they’ve got this far despite their title-winning boss, Argentine Diego Garzitto, leaving abruptly in September. Former Senegal national coach Lamine Ndiaye has taken over and the side continues to produce a cunning blend of skill and dogged determination.

Former Liverpool boss Rafa Benitez, who took over the Inter hotseat from Jose Mourinho at the start of the season, is a worried man. He said: “It is the first time an African team is reaching a Club World Cup final, and so for Mazembe, it is very important and I think it will be a very tough opponent, if you weigh the level of their determination.”

And as Inter’s Argentine captain Javier Zanetti points out: “The standard of football is levelling out around the world and if a Brazilian club can crash out to an African side, why not a European one?"