Former Drum journalist Can Themba commented that there were names that did not lend themselves to the prefix ”mister”. Among them he included his own and that of Jesus Christ.
This came to my mind when I learned that Patrick Pule ”Ace” Ntsoelengoe, the former Kaizer Chiefs star and one of South Africa’s greatest footballers, had been found dead in his car in Lenasia, south of Johannesburg. Fifty when he died, Ace was permanently youthful, a kind of Peter Pan figure. The cause of his death remains unclear.
I should call him ”bra Ace”, as I first made his acquaintance around the time I learnt to read English.
Even to a pedigreed Orlando Pirates fanatic such as me, it was obvious that his was a special talent.
When the French introduced the soccer boot known as Patrick, in my young mind it was in recognition of the man’s greatness. Even Jomo Sono had to settle for lending his name to a range of Puma footwear.
It is thanks to Ace that my fledgling vocabulary was boosted with words such as ”maestro” and ”legend”. I thought ”maestro” might be his African name — it ended with a vowel when all the ”Christian” names I knew did not.
Controversies will rage forever about whether Yster Khomane was better than Ryder Mofokeng or whether Patson Banda’s talent was superior to that of Banks Setlhodi. But everyone, even on the black-and-white side of the Orlando divide, has always accepted that Ace’s nickname, Mabhekapansi (the one who looks down), must not be uttered in vain.
As Chiefs boss Kaizer Motaung said this week, the skills of the back-to-back world footballer of the year, Ronaldinho, come closest to describing Ace’s style of play.
Fans across the bridge at the Orlando West’s shanty ground, almost a kilometre from Ace’s stomping ground of Orlando stadium, would know when Ace was in possession, as the loud cries of ”Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace” carried out of the stadium. A trademark of his game was his sudden decision to simply walk with the ball at his feet while the game was being played at furious pace.
I particularly remember the 1980 Mainstay Cup semi-final between Kaizer Chiefs and Moroka Swallows, which ended in a 5-5 draw. Though I wasn’t a fan of either side, the aunt I was staying with over the summer holidays understood the import of the occasion and allowed me to go to Orlando stadium. There Ace Ntsoelengoe produced a performance that seemed to have come from a script, scoring repeatedly to equalise for Chiefs.
If I had been older, phrases such as ”technical wizardry” and ”master reader of the game” would have sprung to mind. But I could tell a great player when I saw one.
Ace joined Chiefs in 1969 and in 1973 took his talents to the United States and Canada, where he spent 10 seasons. At the time of his death, he was a youth team coach at Chiefs.
The greatest lesson he impressed on my young mind was that not everything from Kaizer Chiefs was as undesirable as my family had made me believe.