SOCCER: Lungile Madywabe
EMBATTLED, directionless, em-broiled in a players’ pay dispute, disagreement about the ownership of the team, and trophyless for many seasons. Orlando Pirates have now shed this dark past to emerge with pride and dignity, to carry the hopes of many in South Africa.
It is just over two years since Irvin Khoza took over as executive director of Orlando Pirates. Last year the people’s team became the league champions after 19 years. And now they are in the semi-finals of Africa’s most prestigious cup competition, the Champions Cup.
The man behind the sudden change of fortune of the oldest team in South African football is a soft-spoken, shy successful businessman. But Khoza’s modesty hides his driving ambition to see the Buccaneers listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. “I would be very happy to see ordinary people becoming directly involved in the team, through putting their money in and buying shares,” he says.
Despite the well-known problems in the management of the team which resulted in Pirates playing second fiddle to rivals Kaizer Chiefs for many years, Khoza is reluctant to comment on the messy state of affairs before he came back for the second time in 1992. “I can’t say there was something wrong, only that certain areas needed reinforcements.”
Since parting ways with Chibuku four years ago due to a disagreement over a sponsorship deal, Pirates stayed without a sponsor until early this year when Anglo Alpha Cement offered them a sponsorhip — worth “a couple of million”, according to Pirates PRO S’kumbuzo Mthembu — over three years.
Khoza highlights the dilemma faced by the team, saying when he came in one of the things he had to do was “address the question of investor confidence through portraying the right image and perception of the team”.
According to him that meant centralising total control of the day-to-day management of the club. This ultimately led to the “stakeholders seeing the team in a positive way”. This, he says, was imperative because his name was “at stake”.
Another big problem, says Khoza, was that certain members of the club used to treat some players better than others, which led to constant dissent among players and management. He therefore had to “bring back players’ morale”.
He achieved this through forming a three-man technical committee, currently including Joe Frickleton (coach), Ronald Mkhandawiri (assistant coach) and manager Lawrence Ngubane. But, he says sternly, “all that I have achieved would not have been possible without the full backing of the clubs’ committee”.
Khoza took charge of a team that had no sponsor, and hardly any money to pay its players, and went about strengthening the squad, including talented players like Mark Fish and Helman Mkhelele from Cosmos.
It was widely believed that Khoza, as a successful businessman, had put his money into the team to rescue it from the mire. Shrugging this suggestion aside, he says, “I negotiated deals and staggered payments until we got a sponsor.”
And he also argues that whatever resources there were in the team at the time he took over, he made sure that they were diverted to areas of dire need. The most important thing he says he had to do under those circumstances was to cut down on excesses “and make sure that the buck stops with me”.
Well, do you doubt him? Not if you were one of the large group of spectator who went to see Pirates every week and came back close to tears because they lost another game — and there was no sign of improvement.
It will certainly be a tribute to him should the team bring the Champions Cup home. And he certainly thinks they will, having drilled into their heads that “advancing to the later stages of the competition will turn them into living monuments”.
In his endeavour to see Pirates taking their rightful place not only in South African football but also in the world, Khoza is busy negotiating with their sponsor the possibilities of constructing a training centre south of Johannesburg to be used for the grooming of the youngsters and a training centre for the team.