Given the choice between Palacios, Vermezovic and Komphela, who would you choose?

The biggest question in South African football is the simplest one of all: presented with Vladimir Vermezovic, Augusto Palacios and Steve Komphela, who would YOU choose to coach your football club?

Not difficult is it? Kaizer Chiefs boss VV isn’t that bad. He produces answers we can understand without sub-titles, though the Serbian has yet to explain satisfactorily the curious absence of midfielder Tinashe Nengomasha in recent weeks, following an alleged training-ground bust-up.

Lehlohonolo Majoro's four-goal Nedbank Cup blitz against the Leopards at the weekend certainly did VV no harm. The lad with "balz" now has eight goals in seven games and may just turn things around for the patient Amakhosi millions.

Palacios, the Peruvian caretaker at Orlando Pirates, remains difficult to read or listen to. His tactical decisions in the Buccaneers’ 2-1 extra-time Nedbank Cup defeat against Komphela’s Free State Stars were hard to fathom, just like those of his suspended Brazilian predecessor Julio Leal. He gained measure of revenge in the League game against Komphela’s men, but I’m still not convinced.

And then we have Komphela and his little Stars of Bethlehem. Not only has the former Amakhosi midfielder produced a multi-national company to be proud of in South Africa’s remote “House of Bread”, he also gives a cracking interview – and was able to raise his shell-shocked troops to victory in extra-time after the late, late equaliser from Daine Klaite last week.

The Nedbank Cup quarter-final against Kaizer Chiefs now looms for “Ea Lla Kotto” (Basotho for ”fight to the end”) and even a possible title tilt, though the three Soweto giants – never forget Moroka Swallows - and Johan Neeskens’ currently impregnable Sundowns stand firmly in their way.

The point is this: With Palacios is temporary charge at Pirates and VV under huge pressure at Chiefs, surely Komphela should be the coach of choice for Irvin Khoza and Kaizer Motaung, South Africa’s footballing king-makers?

It’s not like this is a new story. Google “Neal Collins Free State Stars” and you’ll find http://neal-collins.blogspot.com/2011/12/o-little-town-of-bethlehem-all-you-ever.html, my pre-Christmas epic which wrapped up and presented Komphela’s men, including Zambia’s Afcon winning goalkeeper Kennedy Mweena and top-scorer Edward Manqela two weeks before Santa popped down the chimney.

Curiously, Kaizer and his son Bobby have emphatically denied any link between their family business and Komphela, who served under Bafana Bafana boss Palacios a full 20 years ago.

All the talk is of Bloemfontein Celtic coach Clinton Larsen or Germany’s 1990 World Cup-winning captain Lothar Mathaus heading for the big time, with former Pirates’ treble-winning boss Ruud Krol waiting in the wings with his notebook and pen resplendent at so many SAPL matches this season.

Madness. In a nation crying out for local coaches of quality at all levels, Komphela, who played 24 times for South Africa in a playing career which covered Chiefs, Stars and two stints in Turkey, stands out like a sore but prominent thumb.

His post-match interview on Saturday was a thing of beauty, as it so often is with the philosophical Komphela.

He generously paid tribute to the Buccaneers who walked the plank in a cup competition for the first time since 2010, saying: “There was a moment when I felt that it was not meant to be our night (that was probably in the inexplicable 5^th minute of injury time when Klaite’s free-kick found a route past the miserly Mweene) but my players showed great fighting spirit.

“We knew the Pirates profile. We knew they were dangerous. My team’s performance was close to perfection. It had to be.”

Despite a subsequent Rantie/McCarthy inspired defeat on the cabbage patch that is the Orlando Stadium, Komphela remains an over-achiever this season.

As for his relationship with then-national boss Palacios in 1992, Khompela grinned: “I remember well how Augusto made me captain of the national team. It was Palacios who introduced me to leadership – so it was interesting to achieve victory against my leader, my mentor, my coach.

“Augusto came up to me before he game and said: ‘We have to kill each other today,’ but no son can be happy murdering his father. We just scored beautiful goals.”

Read it carefully. This man Khomphela has the verbal acumen of Tottenham’s Harry Redknapp and, arguably, the recuperational skills of Sunderland’s Martin O’Neill. Give him the longevity in management offered to Sir Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger, and South Africa will have a coach to conjure with.

NEDBANK CUP QUARTER-FINAL DRAW:
Amazulu (my choice) v Santos
Kaizer Chiefs v Free State Stars
SuperSport United v Jomo Cosmos
Mamelodi Sundowns v Maritzburg United

This column first appeared in www.thenewage.co.za. A newspaper well worth a read… my column Neal and Pray appears every Tuesday… and it’s only R3.50!

Orlando Pirates suspend Julio Leal: is it time for coach McCarthy?

Lend me you Buccaneers: Julio Leal and Benni McCarthy

READERS of this blog won’t be surprised to hear it, but the uninformed will be amazed to hear that Orlando Pirates’ Brazilian coach Julio Leal has been suspended today, pending an investigation.

With the Kaizer Chiefs showdown looming in Soweto on Saturday, the Iron Duke has shown his steel.

Back on Tuesday, February 28, I wrote this piece http://www.neal-collins.blogspot.com/2012/02/revolting-buccaneers-threaten-to-sink.html headlined “Revolting Buccaneers threaten to sink Brazilian boss Leal”. Last week, after repeated denials from Leal, his goalkeeper Moeneeb Josephs and all sorts of Buccaneering types, I wrote http://www.neal-collins.blogspot.com/2012/03/will-irvin-khosa-do-roman-abramovich.html which suggested chairman Irvin Khoza, the Iron Duke, would follow the example set by Chelsea and sack his coach under pressure from his senior players, namely one Benni McCarthy.

Again, all sorts of denials. He’s won two trophies already this season, said the non-believers. They’re still in contention for the League despite that embarrassing African Champions League exit in Angola. They didn’t sparkle in their Nedbank Cup clash with Third Division minnows Ethekwini Coastal over the weekend but they won 1-0. No need to panic.

But there was. Just like Andre Villas Boas at Chelsea when Frank Lampard went public with his dissatisfaction, Leal was on his way out from the moment the Pirates players got together a fortnight ago to tell chairman Khoza they wanted the ineffectual Brazilian OUT.
Why do you think 34-year-old McCarthy started the game in Umlazi on Saturday? Because Leal had suddenly seen the light or because he felt threatened by the former Blackburn Rovers and West Ham striker?

Today, the full text of Orlando Pirates’ official statement reads:  “Orlando Pirates Football Club has with immediate effect suspended the coach, Mr Julio Cesar Leal, as the club embarks on a fact finding investigation into reasons why, during performance evaluation sessions, the coach expressed that “he could not see his way forward” and offered the chairman “to do what is right for the club”.

“Augusto Palacios, Technical Director of Development will assume the role of head coach. The rest of the technical team stays the same.”

That’s not quite as bad as what’s happened at Platinum Stars, where coach Owen Da Gama has been suspended pending an investigation in to players having to pay their boss R5,000 to play in the first team. But it’s just as final.

Leal will not be back.

As Pirates wait for today’s Nedbank Cup last 16 draw and send out Sifiso Myene for a reserve friendly against Moroka Swallows at The Dome this afternoon, we should be talking about an all-conquering side in perfect harmony.

Instead, though the Buccaneers have plundered every major domestic trophy on offer in South Africa, the club is in turmoil.

But before rival Kaizer Chiefs fans begin celebrating prior to the weekend’s huge Soweto derby against the Ghost and their haunted professionals, consider this: Ruud Krol, the Dutchman so rudely ejected from Orlando despite winning an unprecedented treble last season, is still in the market.

And Germany’s 1990 World Cup-winning captain Lothar Mattheus has, I’m reliably informed, handed his CV to Khoza. Then there’s Free State Stars boss Steve Komphela waiting in the wings for a bigger, better club than the little stars of Bethlehem.

Any one of these three could walk the plank before the weekend. Even if they don’t, the players will be revelling in their revolution.

To parody the traditional end of epoch motto: The coach is gone. Long live the coach.

Have you seen how Chelsea are playing since AVB departed? John Terry is playing like the lighthouse of old, Didier Drogba banged in his 100^th Premier League goal over the weekend, the first African to achieve that feat.

Now, with Leal gone, Benni McCarthy – a man of considerable experience and a deadly nose for goal – will be telling his stunned Buccaneer buddies: “Let’s get out there and show the Iron Duke what we can do.”

Believe me, today’s suspension will not weaken the Pirates at 2.30pm on Saturday. The 14 million Amakhosi will need to pray even harder than they were before. And what price Benni McCarthy becoming a player-coach? At 34, he's the same age as AVB was at Chelsea!

Follow me on www.twitter.com/nealcol. That way, you get to hear these things before our mates.

Nedbank Cup last 16 draw just in:
Kaizer Chiefs vs Black Leopards
Orlando Pirates vs Free State Stars
Bidvest Wits vs Mamelodi Sundowns
Golden Arrows vs Maritzburg United
Amazulu vs Witbank Spurs
Jomo Cosmos vs Platinum Stars
United FC vs Supersport United
Roses United vs Santos