Andrew Muchineripi SOCCER
With Sundowns winning again in midweek and now just nine points away from a third consecutive Castle Premiership title, the Bob Save Super Bowl represents the sole hope of salvation for Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs.
Not that Sundowns are going to let them have it all their own way, as they appear to have a relatively easy quarter-final against out-of-sorts Free State Stars at Loftus Stadium on Sunday.
Pirates, fresh from a six-goal mauling of Stars on Wednesday night, should prove too strong for Bush Bucks at FNB Stadium on Saturday, leaving Chiefs with easily the toughest task.
The Amakhosi travel to Chatsworth Stadium, just outside Durban, for the match of the weekend against Manning Rangers. A tussle between holders SuperSport United and AmaZulu completes the line-up.
Nothing, it seems, can stop the Sundowns juggernaut, with second-half goals from Daniel Mudau and Alain Amougou bringing a 2-0 Premiership win over African Wanderers at Kings Park. With the league as good as won – they can lose four of their last seven matches and still lift the title – coach Paul Dolezar can now concentrate on the final leg of the treble.
The Rothmans Cup was won some time ago with an ultimately easy two-goal triumph over Stars, who looked far from Premier Soccer League material when crumbing against Pirates.
It cannot help the sagging morale of the Eastern Free State club that they were hit for seven by Sundowns at the same stage of the competition a few seasons ago.
True, the cup can be a great leveller (or so the time-honoured clich would have us believe) but when class meets graft, the former inevitably emerges victorious.
The biggest threat to Sundowns will be complacency, a misguided belief that they need only turn up to succeed. But with fiery Franco-Yugoslav coach Dolezar at the helm, that is highly unlikely.
Dolezar is obsessed by success and is rapidly developing into the Sir Alex Ferguson of South Africa. He brought the Rothmans Cup to Kaizer Chiefs twice and now the treble looms large on the horizon.
If Sundowns are the affluent, successful image of South African soccer, Stars come from an entirely different background. They are unfashionable, lack players of real pedigree, and change coaches with alarming rapidity.
But it says much for owner Mike Mokoena that they somehow survive, always defying the worst fears, and the fact that they reached the Rothmans Cup final speaks volumes for their mental and physical resilience.
The Pirates-Bucks showdown brings former Buccaneers coach Victor “Mind Your Language” Bondarenko back to Johannesburg to try and find a way of taming Steve Lekoelea and Dennis Lota.
Both scored twice in the rout of Stars and it seems almost inevitable that Zambian scoring machine Lota will move on at the end of the season, with China already mentioned as a possible destination.
This is a match Pirates should win with a few goals to spare provided they do not hit one of their often unexplainable off- days – like when they lost to 10-man Wanderers in Durban recently after leading by two goals.
Long-serving Nigerian goalkeeper William Okpara had a shocker that afternoon and he dare not slip up again as Bucks possess a clinical finisher in Zimbabwean Wilfred “Silver Fox” Mugeyi.
Chiefs had tended to get the better of Rangers in cup competitions, and who can ever forget that wonderful goal scored by Nigerian defender Muisa Ajao in the 1998 Rothmans Cup semi-finals at Chatsworth?
The goal is shown each week as part of the introduction to the SABC programme World of Soccer, and I have yet to witness a better strike since the Premier Soccer League was formed four years ago.
Ajao is now at Sundowns, but that will be small comfort for Rangers goalie Grant Johnson as Siyabonga Nomvete is in irresistible form with two goals in the 4-1 midweek demolition of Hellenic in a delayed second-round tie.
That result was arguably the best of an often disappointing season for the Amakhosi, and one believes they will carry too much guile and class for hard-working but ultimately limited Rangers.
With all the talk centring on Sundowns, Pirates and Chiefs, it is easy to forget that the holders of the trophy are SuperSport United, who host AmaZulu at Caledonian Stadium on Friday night.
SuperSport humiliated AmaZulu 7-2 in the Premiership last weekend with Cameroonian Jean Paul Bang-Penda and David Notoane scoring two goals each, and must be favoured to triumph again, albeit by a much smaller margin.
If the form book proves a reliable guide (just for once) we should have Chiefs against Pirates and Sundowns against SuperSport in the semi-finals next month, and no fan or sponsor could ask for more than that.