African Champions League: Why the trip to TP Mazembe requires careful consideration for Orlando Pirates

Flying high: Daine Klate on a high in the first leg against TP Mazembe

ON the beaming face of it, Roger de Sa’s comments after Orlando Pirates’ stirring 3-1 win over TP Mazembe in the CAF Champions League sound just like any other coach after an exceptional first leg performance.

The much-maligned De Sa said: “It could have been five to be honest. But with all our injuries, that was an outstanding performance from everybody.

“I’m a bit worried that we let in a home goal, because in these games it’s so important not to concede. That away goal will give them a little bit to work on.”

The Mocambique-born De Sa, who won international caps at basketball and football for South Africa, added: “This second leg is going to be very tough, because not every team goes there and get everything, but at least we have got something to take with us.

“I am very happy with the way we carried ourselves and the way we played, but we have a lot to do because it will be very difficult when we go to the Congo.”

You can say that again. De Sa, struck in the face by vuvuzela-wielding fans when his double-treble winners all but faded out of the PSL title race with six successive draws, can take a bit of stick. But Lubumbashi makes Orlando look like Houghton.

Ironically, the side tagged “Drawlando Pirates” domestically need just that on May 5. Even a single-goal defeat would be enough to see them through to the last eight, where the group format kicks in.

But as we watch this week’s European Champions League semi-finals, the words “it will be very difficult in the Congo” should not be confused with “it will be very difficult at the Nou Camp”.

I’ve offered to go with the Buccaneers to the away leg. The tycoon who owns TS Mazembe makes Irvin Khoza look small-time in Congolese football. My aim is to ensure fair-play, guard against dodgy refereeing, threatening soldiers and a repeat of the post-match incident at Orlando, where the referee was punched in the face and the perpetrator escaped in the private jet.

I’ll use my contacts at eNCAnews, eTV, The New Age and on twitter and facebook to tell South Africans if the Pirates are robbed. At least, that’s the plan.

Moise Katumbi will not let South Africa’s Sea Robbers escape without a fight. The return leg at Stade TP Mazembe in Kamalondo near Lubumbashi offers seats to just 18,000 spectators. I hope to be one of them. I expect unfair play on May 5, starting from 3.30pm local time.

Here’s why. Katumbi, 48, has led the side for 13 years, guiding them to consecutive Champions League titles in 2009/2010, duplicating their 1967/68 achievement, when Moise was a mere tot.

South Africa has troops in the DRC, just like they did in the Central African Republic. They are helping to support a controversial regime in a war-torn country which is among the poorest on the planet but awash with mineral wealth. Quite what the locals will make of this, I hope to find out.

What I do know is that Katanga is Copper Belt. And when the Congo government banned copper exports this month, he stood against it in what is described by analysts as “a clear power play”.  Many think Katumbi will go all the way to a presidential coup. Awkward given South Africa’s role in keeping the current regime in charge.

Here’s the background: In 1964, Moise Soriano, the son of a Sephardic Jew from Greece, came to the land of his mother’s birth. Then-president Mobutu Sese Seko was, at the time, trying to wipe-out all traces of the nation’s French/Belgian colonial past.

Legend suggests Katumbi, voted governor of the copper and cobalt-rich province of Katanga in 2007, made his first business deal aged 13, when he sold a basket of fish for R40.

By 1997, he had made enough money to buy TP Mazembe. By 2010 his spending on the team had risen to 

around R100m A YEAR.

He says: "Bit by bit, we are making our march towards the land of the greats. Our income is meagre, but for the image of the club, for the image of the country and to give an opportunity for our youth, we fight on.”

The "TP" in Mazembe's name stands for "Tout Puissant", which is French for "all powerful". Ridiculous spending has made that dream come true.

The club formerly known as Engelbert are nicknamed Les Corbeaux (The Ravens) despite having a crocodile with a ball in its mouth on the team badge.  In 2010, the club made FIFA Club World Cup history by becoming the first club team from Africa to reach the final after beating CONMEBOL's Internacional of Brazil 2–0 in the semi-final.

TP Mazembe defeated ES Tunis 6-1 on aggregate to win their fourth CAF Champions League crown in 2010, they boast a turn-over of R150 million with rivals CS Don Bosco – beaten by South Africa’s SuperSport United in the CAF Confederation Cup this season – now a mere feeder club to the “all powerful” Mazembe.

Some wicked history: the club was founded in 1939 by Benedictine monks of the order of Sanctimonious Saint that directed the Holy Institute Boniface of Élisabethville, now known as Lubumbashi.

To diversify the student activities for those that did not consecrate themselves to the priesthood, the missionaries decided to set up a football team, named Saint Georges FC.

In 1944 the team took the name of FC Engelbert after its sponsor, a tyre brand. "Tout Puissant" was added after an undefeated first league title in 1966.

After the independence of Congo on June 30, 1960, Engelbert won the treble of League, Katanga Cup and Congo Cup. In 1967 and 1968, they won the African Cup of Champions and were finalists a record FOUR successive times in 1967, 1968, 1969 and 1970.

But it was only when the aforementioned fast-rising businessman Moïse Katumbi Chapwe took over that they were able to repeat that feat in 2009 and 2010 after reaching the 2008 final.

Worryingly, Morocco’s Wydad Casablanca and Egypt’s seven-time winners Al-Ahly have won the last two African Champions League trophies.

Moise is impatient. Eager to win again after a two-year hiatus. Ten new players, none of them from the Congo, have been purchased. Money is no object. Orlando Pirates need to be aware of that. This is win at all costs.

Nobody can be trusted. Where will they stay? Will the noisy Mazembe fans know? Will the Buccaneers sleep the night before the game? Who will referee? Will somebody throw a punch? Will the army be around? Will the locals be pro-government or anti-South African?

Those are the questions De Sa and Khoza must deal with. Roger wants me to be there. He is aware of the potential pitfalls. He says: "I do not think that many people understand the magnitude of our victory over Mazembe.

"TP Mazembe are one of the biggest clubs in Africa. It won’t be easy in the Congo.”

You can say that again.

Forget the Vuvuzelas... now Beckenbauer's blowing his own trumpet

JUST when you thought the blast of the Vuvuzela was going to dominate this World Cup, out come the Germans blowing their own trumpet. Loudly. Some readers may need earplugs at this point.

If all this absorbing World Cup needed was a bit of bite, then the legendary “Kaizer” Frans Beckenbauer and his coach Joachim Loew have provided it, spurring old enemy England on to greater things – hopefully – when they meet Algeria in Cape Town on Friday night.

Lest we forget, England’s opening 1-1 draw with the USA last Saturday was a bit of an embarrassment next to Germany’s 4-0 blitzing of Australia a day later.

Today, the legend that is Beckenbauer – one of the men who will decide whether the 2018 World Cup will go to England, Russia or Spain – said: "What I saw of the English against the US had very little to do with football. It looked to me as if the English have gone backwards into the bad old days of kick and rush.” Ouch.

While Germany’s Bilt newspaper insisted: “We’re going to blow you all away” after catching the Socceroos on the hop, the English tabloids were forced to lament “The Hand of Clod” after Robert Green’s lamentable error gifted another former colony a point.

Coach Loew, whose contract runs out during this tournament, is complaining he’s got too many options after the return to form of his Bayern Munich strike force while England have injury niggles and selection problems to ponder all over the pitch.

Loew said: “As far as our attackers are concerned we have so many players who can turn a game and I've got a range of possibilities as far as our defence is concerned."

If England don’t win Group C ahead of the Yanks, Algeria and Slovenia, they’ll face Germany in the last 16 (assuming they manage to come second)... and even if they do end up on top, they will probably play Ghana before a quarter-final against the old enemy.

Beckenbauer, 61, won the World Cup as both a player (in 1974) and coach (1990). He explained his quotes in South Africa’s free Times newspaper by saying: "The English are being punished for the fact that there are very few English players in the Premier League as clubs use better foreign players from all over the world.

“I am not sure if the their coach Fabio Capello can do much about it."

Still, there were nicer words from former boss Sven Goran Eriksson, now in charge of the Ivory Coast. He said: “I think England were unlucky. Robert Green was very unlucky.

“I feel really sorry for him because it must be awful to do what he did. He's a good goalkeeper and you always feel sorry for people when they do things like that.”

The Swede, who never got the recognition he deserved for taking England to three successive major quarter-finals, added: “Don’t worry. England will qualify. I am sure they will qualify.”

Neal Collins (nealcol on Twitter) is in South Africa to promote his first novel A GAME APART. For more information see www.nealcollins.co.uk. If you think the Scottish bagpipes should be banned rather than the Vuvuzela, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1hrMRk5FnY.

Forget The Axe, consider the facts, Aaron and Co deserve your support!

HERE’S the problem I have with South Africans. I’ve been to the big city stadia, seen the work, seen the effort, the enthusiasm, the beautiful hotels, the game parks. Brilliant.

But when I write a glowing piece about their captain Aaron Mokoena (the Johannesburg Star picked up the same piece I wrote here last weekhttp://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=6&click_id=4&art_id=vn20100430071505260C491079), all I get is abuse. All the replies to the article were deeply negative, verging on the nasty. Their captain and youngest-ever player? Rubbish! It came on email, Facebook and Twitter, not to mention on the Star website. South Africans may get behind England, Spain, Italy or Germany, but they appear to stubbornly resist all calls to support their own team.

What rot. Didn’t they watch “The Axe” scythe down all-comers in the FA Cup semi-final upset against Spurs a couple of weeks ago at Wembley (above)? Don’t they hear the words of their skipper? See the work he’s doing on and off the pitch with education, gun crime, poverty?

Anyway, fortunately, Carlos Alberto Parreira is in charge, not the mob. And he’s named Mokoena, Steven Pienaar of Everton and, on no evidence at all, West Ham’s Benni McCarthy in his provisional squad of 29. Just 10 of those players are foreign based.

And there was Aaron this morning on Sky in Britain, with Uruguay’s Gus Poyet and Nigeria’s John Utaka, a real ambassador for his nation.

He said: “Every South African fan is up for the World Cup, it’s brilliant. Sport can change people’s lives as we saw in the film Invictus about the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Rugby was mainly a white people’s sport - soccer is the No1 sport in South Africa but 1995 was a moment when Nelson Mandela had to unify people. Rugby was the only way. We won it and it worked.

“I always say to people, realise South Africa has hosted rugby and cricket World Cups, Lions tours and the Confederations Cup, no problem. That’s enough.

“South Africa is a really beautiful country. But which country doesn’t have crime? People are trying to blow things out of proportion. Yes, we have crime in South Africa, but that crime will not jeopardise the World Cup. The President, Jacob Zuma, says the number one thing is the safety of the people.”

As for their chances in Group A against Mexico, Uruguay and France, Mokoena said: “The Vuvuzelas (African football horns) are our secret weapon! I think we have to do well. It’s a tough group. We’ve been drawn against teams that have been in the World Cup before. But we have to get into the quarter-finals, every group is hard to be fair.

“Steven Pienaar has done well at Everton, incredible. Steve went to Ajax from South Africa, one of the best, they have an incredible development structure - I came through there too.”

And on the inclusion of McCarthy, he argues: “I always say Benni has been one of the best strikers we have produced in South Africa. He won the Chmapions League with Porto. Knowing Benni, he’s a quality striker, no doubt about him, when he’s really happy, he can get you goals.

“Unfortunately at the moment it’s not working that well for him at West Ham. To be fair with Benni, if he’s not playing, it happens to everyone, he easily puts weight on. It’s happening at the moment with him.”

Parreira himself, after tours to Brazil and Germany with his home-based players, says: "This is going to be difficult. We don't know what condition the foreign players will arrive in - physically and technically.

"Some of them have played too many games - like Steven Pienaar who has played 27 games since November, some have played half of what Pienaar played while others started in one or two.

"So they will come here in different fitness levels, which will give our physical trainer a lot of headaches to put them in good shape for the competition.”

Parreira should chill a little. With Mokoena and Pienaar as his spine, he has every chance of proving his side are better than their current lowly ranking of 90^th in the world.

Neal leaves for the World Cup on Tuesday, where he attends the pre-tournament Indaba 2010 in Durban. He'll be available for any questions from Bleacher Reporters through his website www.nealcollins.co.uk