Bitter-sweet honour for Limpopo softball ahead of world cup

For the longest time the so-called Cinderella sports codes had been receiving the shorter end of the stick as far as media coverage is concerned. In the past, the argument used by newspapers to shut out the "minor" sports such as table tennis, volleyball, karate and judo, just to mention a few example, was that the space in the sports section was limited. 

The editors would also claim that the heavyweights which enjoy commercial backing, such as football, rugby and cricket for example, carried too much punch power for flyweight codes.

The sports editors were bluffing of course. Firstly, many of them simply did not have interest or understood the "smaller" sports, so they despised them. Secondly, the editors hobnobbed with the bossed of the big sports for opportunities of international travel and other favours, so they did their damnedest to cover those sports in the name of "that's what the readers" want.

Today, newspapers have active online platforms for their news coverage and yet, strangely, the stories on the smaller sports have nearly evaporated if not completely cancelled. So, it shows that the issue about limited space has always been a silly excuse.

I'm reminded of this matter by the fact that we are just two weeks from the start of the world softball championship for men.

The tournament organised under the auspices of the World Baseball & Softball Confederation will be staged in New Zealand from November 26 to December 4. Argentina are defending champions while the host New Zealand are seven-time previous champions.

Of urgent interest for South African sports followers is that our national team has qualified for the world showpiece and a 15-man squad has been named. A fascinating info about the squad is that its entire coaching staff is made up of tacticians from Limpopo. It's sweet and bitter bit of info about the province. 

Sweet because Limpopo has always been crazy about softball. Granted, historically, the following for the ball game in Limpopo has not always cut across the province. But the passion for the game in Capricorn, Waterberg and Sekhukhune had been enough to carry the whole province. Even in the districts softball had not been big in the commununities, the game however had strong presence on the campuses of higher learning in those regions. 

In fact, the ball game in Limpopo and neighbouring provinces of North West and Gauteng has had strong links with academia and campus life for decades. This was significantly strong during the 70s, 80s and 90s. However, after the turn of the 21st the game in Limpopo experienced dwindling fortunes, which included losing active support by both corporates and the state, represented in this instance by the Limpopo provincial government.

Today, to elaborate on thebitter reality, there are communities in the above mentioned regions where fierce baseball battles were fought in the 80s and 90s  and today there's no mention of the sport anymore. 

But as the world cup-bound squad shows, the game is still very much alive in Limpopo. All the game needs is the return of the love by the corporates and government, more decent media coverage including television. Perhaps, even on the side of the sport itself, exemplary  administrators willing to go the extra mile will go a long to revive the fortunes of the sport.

It will be hard to convince the commercially-driven channels, but the public broadcaster is duty-bound to recognise the existence of softball and its activities, including the world cup next week. 

In mainstream media, perhaps the game needs friends like yours truly to fancy any chances of having its affairs being published from time time. 

In the meantime, may the sports followers and peace-loving people in our country and beyond rise and salute these fine gentlemen of the game - Lemo Raphasha, the SA team head coach, and his assistant coaches Thapelo Seshoka, Thabang Letsoalo and Nakedi Raphalo. And that's not all, as there's also Nakedi Mohlake, master pitching mentor. 

All the five coaches have come through the ranks of then Great North Softball Association, the precursor to the current Limpopo Softball Association.

We hail these fine gentlemen of softball and their players, despite the odds being heavily stacked against South Africa in Auckland, New Zealand. To Raphasha and the boys, shred the form book to pieces and kick butt the best way you know. Vasbyt!

International weekend to forget for SA sport

Quo Vadis Proteas... losing to the Netherland in a decider for a place in the semifinals of the T20 Cricket World Cup was damaging for South Africa.

It was a weekend to forget for South Africa as far as international sport is concerned.

First on the chopping block on Saturday were the rugby side the Springboks losing 19-16 to Ireland in Dublin. It was intense, high pressure game which the Boks could have won had their goalkicking was on point on the evening. There were two or three clumsy moments by the South Africans and such errors were bound to be punished as the Irish are not just a decent rugby but the No 1 Test team right now.

There were times when the Springboks were never unflustered by big occasions far away from home and that's what the characteristic the team must retrace to command respect again. 

To say 19-16 loss to the team rated top is no consolation because the current ranking does not make any team invincible. We should have won in Dublin.

Sunday was double heartbreak and very early on the day that many South Africans did not witness the disgrace of our national cricket team Proteas coming short against the Netherlands in the T20 Cricket World Cup.

Ahead of the tussle in Adelaide, Australia, all South Africa needed was a win of any kind against the Dutch and proceed to the semifinals. In all fairness, losing is part of the game but conceding such an important defeat to a low ranking side such as Netherlands is unforgivable. Painful. I won't say more.

Later on on Sunday morning it was the Soweto Marathon time. The last time a South African male won this most prestigious standard marathon (42.2km) in South Africa was back in 2011. 

On Sunday the marathon was returning to action after two years of Covid-19 induced break. It would appear when we were masking and isolating, the Ethiopian runners were busy preparing for the big prize. 

For the record, Ethiopia took first two positions in the men's race, with the third position going to a Lesotho runner. The first South African to cross the line was in 5th position.

The women's race a podium clean sweep by Ethiopia, as three ladies from the Horn of Africa took the honours.

The first local woman home was in 9th spot.

Ukraine's Shakhtar defy war to shine in Champions League

Anatoliy Trubin

I was aware of Shakhtar Donetsk qualifying for the group stages of the current Uefa Champions League season. However, I expected the club from the Donbas region to finally throw in the towel and not show up, given the growing intensity of the war in their country. 

However, after missing the club's earlier matches in Group F I finally got the chance to watch the "Miners" in action when they met Real Madrid in the Spanish capital on October 5. I was amazed by the youthful outlook of the team, fitness and competitive levels. 

Champions Real sweat for their 2-1 win. It did not look like they were playing a team living in the shadow of a devastating war.  After it lost nearly its entire foreign legion who fled the war, the club had to find new ways to survive and honour its fixtures.

But Shakhtar are made of a sterner stuff and are used to conflict and adversity more than most of the Ukraine. The club had been living and playing in exile since 2014 after Russian invaded the coal-rich Donbas region, the precursor to the eventual invasion and war in the whole of Ukraine since February 24, 2022.

Shakhtar have had to find ways and means to honour their fixtures, like this past Wednesday when they hosted Real Madrid in Warsaw for the round 4 of Champions League fixtures. It's on record now that it had to take an effort of epic proportions by Antonio Rudger to equalise for the Spaniards in the final seconds. 

The big Madrid centre-back stiches to fix his head afterwards, after collision with Shakhtar's ice-cool 21-year-goalkeeper Anatoliy Trubin during the goalscoring effort. 

Tomorrow, Shakhtar meet Dynamo Kyiv in the Ukrainian Premier League. The new season began in August after the previous season was abandoned before it ended due to the war.

Though most of the players of both Shakhtar and Dynamo live in Kyiv, which had offered some reasonable safety for long periods of the war, that relative safety was shattered by systematic missile strikes into the capital city in the past week.

The usually biggest football match in Ukraine will be played in Lviv.

Follow the action on live streaming platforms and see if how much the football has been affected by the war, if there would be any signs. 

Caleb or Shalulile, SA football loses

Bonfils-Caleb Bimenyimana

Earlier this week the suppoters of two of South Africa's biggest clubs, Mamelodi Sundowns and Kaizer Chiefs, engaged in a duel of wits which trended on Twitter about who between the two clubs' top strikers was going to win the local league's Golden Boot. 

While Sundowns followers vouched for their goalgetter Peter Shalulile, the Chiefs legion punted their new striker Bonfils-Caleb Bimenyimana. 

Namibian international Shalulile is the hottest goalpoacher in the South African league for the past three season for the champion club Sundowns, while the lanky Burundian simply known as Caleb is still new in the league. The pair is locked at 6 goals apiece at the top of the league charts, after 9 matches for Shalulile and after 10 matches for Caleb.

My response to the debate is that, both Shalulile and Caleb add value to their clubs and the league but at the end of the day - or the current season in the context of the scoring race - whoever wins between the two, SA football loses.

It loses because the poor scoring rate by South African players would be extended to another level. The difficulty of this situation can be seen with the poor fortunes of the national team Bafana Bafana. Despite the South African Premier League (aka PSL) being touted as one of the best leagues around, whatever that means, the physical evidence is far from the claim. 

Next month the Fifa World Cup kickoffs in Qatar and South Africa is not one of the five countries representing Africa there. Fair enough, Cameroon, Ghana, Morocco, Senegal and Tunisia did not qualify entirely based of the strength of their national leagues. They had mostly benefitted from fine talent based in top leagues in Europe, with some of the players even born and developed by better equipped structures in European countries.

But it is also the truth that many of those overseas-based African players in the 5 African national teams in the 2022 Qatar World Cup worked their way up to the top leagues, from their towns and villages and clubs in Africa. 

So, if the PSL is one of the finest leagues around, why it's South African-born players battle to attract the attention of big clubs in Europe? 

The fairness of the question can be seen through the fact that South Africa does not feature in the next CHAN tournament to be hosted by Algeria in January 2023. CHAN is an African championships played by senior national teams consisting of players campaigning in their domestic leagues. For the record, SA's Bafana Bafana are habitually eliminated in the qualifying rounds and this time were kicked out by Angola via a humiliating 4-1 aggregate score last month.

This outcome clearly means the Angolan Girabola is stronger that the PSL. Angola therefore joins host Algeria, Congo, Mali, Ghana, Ethiopia, Niger, Uganda, Senegal, Mauritania, Madagascar, Sudan, Libya,  Morocco (two-time defending champion), Mozambique, DR Congo, Cameroon, Ivory Coast in the final tournament.

Even in the CAF club championships, clubs from Morocco and Tunisia and fellow North African neighbours Algeria and Egypt,regularly produce results that are far better than the PSL clubs can manage.

Last season, PSL powerhouse Orlando Pirates did well to reach the CAF Confederation Cup final. But they were reduced to runners-up by Berkane, until a decade ago an unfashionable regional club from Morocco. 

The woes of South Africa in international football are rooted in so many wrong things about the PSL. Above struggling with getting the basic techniques right, goalscoring has become like rocket science in the PSL.

I will use the two matches playing today to illustrate my point: Orlando Pirates vs AmaZulu and Golden Arrows vs Stellenbosch. 

Pirates have not scored a goal in their last 3 matches - two league and 1 cup; AmaZulu are winless in their last 5 league matches due to their poor scoring form. Both clubs are desperate for goals in order to win tonight. However, a reasonable punter will bet for a safe but sad 0-0. 

In Durban, hosts Arrows and their vistors are not doing great either in the scoring charts, with rates of 1.2 (from 9 matches) and 1.3 (10 matches) respectively so far. 

I appreciate Shalulile and Caleb very much because of the excitement they bring to the game. However, SA football has a bigger task in its hands to produce similarly reliable, prolific strikers. Without accomplishing this task, and others that are urgent about South African football, our game is heading nowhere. 

Peter Shalulile

Time for Pirates players to show leadership

 

The biggest enemy for South African clubs in African club competitions has, over the years, been the mindset of the players. South African players have a long-standing problem of denying themselves the opportunity of self-empowerment.

The players tend to depend on their coaches to prepare them mentally about the conditions and any other info about their opponents and their countries.

For time immemorial, going to war with no information about your foe has always been a suicidal mission. At least, the insanely brave and super strong can undertake such expeditions and expect to conquer at a high risk.

SA players operating in the local Premiership are however not made like that. Ahead of international matches, they need thorough prep but for that to reach optimum levels, each player must take the trouble to find information about the opponents and their country. The players must share notes about what they found and discuss options about how to deal with they have discovered.

The coaches will continue to plan the strategy based on what they have observed about the playing style and habits - special or uncanny - of the opponents. However, it is up to the players to strengthen their mental resolve to have found out about these things even before the coaches meet them for strategy discussion.

A real professional need not wait on the coach to tell him that Club A are from the City of X and that they have been consistently using a certain core starting XI for the past three months, and that their captain is notorious for discreet body punches in close-up encounters.

Granted, back in the day it was hard to get all of this valuable information about other clubs on the continent. But today there's no excuse; today all this info is available by punching the keys of your smartphone or laptop. If a professional player today claims he did not know about the club and country they travelled to for an official fixture, then that players is lazy and not serious about their career.

Tonight Orlando Pirates meet RS Berkane of Morocco in the CAF Confederation Cup final in Uyo city in Nigeria. Ok, it will be pointless in this fixture for Pirates players to worry themselves about the conditions in Morocco, more so in Berkane, since the match is at a neutral venue.

However, will it help an individual Pirates player to know that the "RS" in the name of the opposition stands for Renaissance Sportive? Of course it will; knowledge is power!

Renaissance means "rebirth" in French, and the meaning can be extended to revival and renewal. And what made it special for Berkane? The club was founded in 1938, and in 1966 another club, Chabab Riadhi de Berkane, was founded. So to avoid attrition and improve football fortunes in the small regional city of Berkane, the two clubs, then both semi-professional, merged to form Renaissance Sportive du Berkane (RSB) in 1971. Six years later, RSB was promoted to Morocco's top league.

So the final is not in the city of The Oranges, so-called because Berkane is big on the production of clementines, the citrus hybrid between a willowleaf mandarin orange and a common sweet orange.

It should by now have helped Pirates players to know about the technical strengths and weaknesses of Berkane and mental make-up of its players. All this data and videos are available online.

Hopefully, Orlando Pirates players have done their homework properly to prepare for the final tonight. That includes the technical aspects of the venue, Godswill Akpabio International Stadium. Even better, the venue is the home ground of Akwa United, the team defender Olisa Ndah played for before joining Pirates last year.

My point, in conclusion, is that South African teams and their players no longer have reasons to be clueless about their opponents in CAF club competitions. They can no longer justify their downcast mood when they travel to any part of Africa.

Information is freely available. Read, be focused and approach matches with a sense of leadership and confidence.

Bring home that cup Buccaneers!  

SA players continue to miss overseas-bound boat

Africans have in the past decade or two become big consumers of the English Premier League, a passion they top up with significant spend on the merchandise of their favourite clubs. South Africans have also joined the fray in recent years, with a large portion of football banter on social media being about happenings in the EPL. 

Personally I found a story of interest in English football this week through the crowing of Fulham as the champions of the English Football League Championship, the second-tier of the English game.

I took interest in the matter given the impressive size of the Championship, and the historical reputation of the majority of the 24 clubs as previous EPL campaigners. These include really big names of English football in the yesteryear, such as Nottingham Forest who finished fourth, Blackburn Rovers (9th), Queens Park Rangers (12th) and Birmingham (20th). 

Apart from the Championship being richer than some of premier leagues in Europe, it is also a highly competitive league which attracts football talent from all over the world, including Africa. That's where my concern lies; how come South Africa does not have players in this league? 

Is that how badly things have turned for us that we can't produce  players competitive enough to play in the second-tier? Sadly, even the current crop of players in SA not so many of them just do not have the kind of temperament and fitness to be in the third-tier of English football. 

The scarcity of SA talent in Europe cuts across, with very little or no representation even in middle strength leagues of countries such as Belgium, Switzerland and Portugal for a few examples. We have no presence to shout about even in smaller leagues such as Austria, eastern Europe and the Scandinavia. 

How many foreign players were in the EFL Championship this season? I don't know. But using Fulham as an example, the London team had just six English players in its 35-man squad. First choice goalkeeper Marek Rodak is from Slovakia, the captain Tom Cairney is Scottish while Serbian striker Aleksandar Mitrović top scored with the new EFL Championship record of 43 league goals in a season.

Fulham also have players from Jamaica, Australia and a pair from the US. Ivorian Jean Michaël Seri (pictured above) is the only African-born player, with a youth career at Africa Sports d'Abidjan and pro debut with ASEC Mimosas. 

However, his solitary presence with the The Cottagers does not represent the real picture as there are far more African-born players in the Championship and that is good for the progress of the game on the continent.

My parting shot is that question again: what's stopping SA players from shining here as well? Do they even know about the EFL Championship? What do ardent soccer followers think about this issue?

Kaitano Tembo was mistreated at the end

The sacking of Kaitano Tembo as the SuperSport United head coach in the South African premier league has left a bitter taste in the mouth.

Tembo had taken the reigns at the Pretoria-based club in 2018, taking over from Eric Tinkler who had a somewhat difficult short stint in charge.

Things changed for the better when Tembo stepped in, despite United finishing sixth at the end of the season. The following season, 2019/20, he delivered the MTN8 cup. Tembo was enjoying a working understanding with his youthful squad as many of the players were developed under his watch in the club's relatively successful academy. That season he finished fifth in the league, same position as in 2020/21. His work in the past two seasons has been made difficult by him losing his key players, mainly to crosstown rich boys, Mamelodi Sundowns.

The heaviest blow was when United's talisman Teboho Mokoena left for Sundowns in January this year, leaving Tembo and the team in serious limbo. Before him, other Matsatsantsa-A-Pitori (Smart young things of Pretoria) stars left during Tembo's tenure include Aubrey Modiba and Grant Kekana, also to Sundowns.

Creative midfielder Sipho Mbule is the last real star remaining at United but the recent big departures have clearly played havoc on his state of mind, and has not been the same player in recent month. The same can be said about the entire squad which, naturally, is feeling despondent about losing the gifted teammates and leaders.  

Now with Mbule strongly linked with a move to Kaizer Chiefs at the end of the current season in two months' time, Tembo responded with a feeling resignation when SowetanLIVE asked him about Mbule's future last month.

“I don't think we need to focus on that, the most important thing is Sipho Mbule is a SuperSport United player at the moment, that's our focus,” Tembo responded.

“What happens at the end of the season we cannot control that in football. But for now, I know that he's our player."

But that optimism by the clearly under pressure Tembo was given a mighty kick in the teeth by United management who has suspended Mbule, for being open about his interest to join Chiefs next season as a free agent. His contract ends in June, and he has rejected new offer by United. Even more disingenuous is the fact that United fires Tembo just days after executing Mbule's suspension, which is practically a sacking.

Other people might look at Tembo league record to find justification for his sacking - 55 wins from 135 matches, with 42 draws and 38 defeats. A 40% winning rate is not a stuff of standing ovations but truth must be told; Tembo's win percentage was hugely cut down by a string of defeats this year. All had not been well at the club and that was not Tembo's fault.

United's former captain's technical acumen as a football coach could not hold sway in boardroom matters but the same board cannot provide any evidence of giving Tembo the support he needed to navigate the stormy waters for his team.

The club did not sign quality replacements for the big stars that had left. The club relied on its young stars and a few middle-of-the-road signees they secured to surge forward. Clearly that was enough. Quality in football is everything while rising stars also have a role to the two must work in sync like industrial nuts and bolts.   

The final straw was the suspension of Mbule. What kind of motivation is that for a team whose want for inspiration is clearly huge?

You got to feel sympathy for Tembo for his loyalty. When rumours made rounds a week ago that Benni McCarthy was heading to SuperSport United after he was sacked by AmaZulu, Tembo responded to SowetanLIVE's enquiry again: "I'm not bothered by the rumours. I'm focusing on my work [and] I will still be here next season."

This was ahead of United's Nedbank Cup quarterfinal clash against second-tier TTM (Tshakhuma Tsha Madzivhandila) at the weekend. United lost 3-2 after extra-time, after going 2-0 up earlier in the match and missing several chances to take their lead out of sight for TTM.

A few days later United CEO Stan Matthews announced Tembo's axing, saying losing to lower league club was the final straw. After that Matthews sang praises of Tembo for his hard work, determination and loyalty.

If that is the case, then why didn't the club allow Tembo to finish and determine his league season, and decide at the end of it whether he is worth spending real money to recruit real talent for the new season?

I think Kaitano Tembo was mistreated by SuperSport in the last months of 23 years of loyal service.   

 

 

Olembe tragedy harks back sweet memories of Roger Milla

The demise of eight football fans in a stampede at Olembe Stadium on Monday has left another dark blot on the beautiful game and the Afcon tournament currently on in Cameroon. 

With proper security measures in place the tragedy could have been avoided, that's what we many football think. Maybe not. 

But one thing that's clear is that the tournament in Cameroon is proving to be among the best in the recent times despite the challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic. The smaller nations in the tournament have come to the party in a big way so much it is expected that one of them will reach the semifinals. That will come as a big boost to the African game after heroics by minnows such as Comoros and Malawi for instance before they fell in the last-16 round.

The tragedy at Olembe nothwithstanding, I feel football-loving Africans need a football anecdote of global proportions to comfort their hearts. 

Though the main stadium for the Afcon tournament is widely known as Olembe, it is in fact officially named Stade Omnisport Paul Biya, after the Cameroon eternal president. Biya, turning 89 next month, has been in power for 39 years. 

The construction of the 60,000-capacity stadium began in 2018 and was officially opened on 3 September 2021. It is located in Olembe, a Yaounde neighbourhood 13km north of the city centre of the Cameroon capital. 

The stadium, however, is not the first one named after a personality and only to be better known by the name of its location in a major city. 

In Italy, the San Siro Stadium in Milan is officially known as Stadio Giuseppe Meazza since 1980, a year after the demise of the city's most favourite footballer ever. Meazza, who was born on 23 August 1910 and died on 21 August 1979, was the most decorated player to emerge from Milan. He played the best years of his career for Inter-Milan, for 14 years, before moving to AC Milan and later Juventus.

He could have begun his career with AC, the club he admired as a child, but rejected him because of his small frame. Meazza was 14 but significantly smaller than his peers because of poorer nutrition he was exposed to. His mother struggled to keep the home fires burning after Meazza's dad died in World War 1 when he was seven years old.

It's formidable history that Inter-Milan took him as he was and gave him his senior debut at just 17, going on to score 242 goals in 365 games for the club. He won three Serie A titles with Inter, and two World Cup titles with Italy in 1934 and 1938. 

Despite his rich football history, and the pride his home city has in him, the stadium named after him is more famously known in Milan, Italy and the rest of the world as the San Siro. 

Similar to Olembe in Yaounde, San Siro is the name of a locality in Milan - about 4km west of the city centre. 

What's begging the question is that, couldn't Cameroon find a uniting football legend to name its premier football stadium after? The country is spoilt for choice - from the likes of Theophile Abega (may his soul rest in peace) and François Omam-Biyik in ages gone by to Rigobert Song and Samuel Eto'o in later years - Cameroonians cite Roger Milla as their biggest legend of all time. 

Milla played in three World Cup editions, the first in 1982 Spain. He was already in retirement since 1988 when President Biya called and asked the 38-year-old to be part of the Indomitable Lions squad for 1990 Italy. Milla set the tournament on fire with four memorable goals and celebrations the world is talking about to this day. 

In 1994 in the US, he scored against Russia to set a new record as the oldest goalscorer ever in the World Cup - at the age 42! 

If there was any personality to be given the honour of Olembe stadium, that one person should have been Roger Milla. And even better, he is the son of Yaounde by birth.

What a lost opportunity.