Standing in the lobby of the Protea Hotel at the Wanderers on Saturday morning, I bumped into Orlando Pirates coach Milutin Sredojevic, as the Bucs squad had camped there overnight ahead of the Soweto derby against Kaizer Chiefs at the FNB Stadium on Saturday.
He was looking relaxed before the biggest game of his coaching career to date, and I asked him how he handled the pressure so well.
“Pressure? This is not pressure,” the Serbian said with a smile. “I was in the Balkan War and watched as bombs came down around me — that is pressure.”
You have to admit he has a point.
But although he coolly dismissed any feelings of anxiety prior to the match, the heat would have been turned up a notch after a game in which his side well and truly threw away two vital Castle Premiership points with a 1-1 draw.
Pirates dominated but once again their frailties in the final third of the pitch proved their undoing. Their failure to add to Benedict Vilakazi’s early strike as chance after chance went begging invited belief in the Chiefs camp that they could equalise and earn an unlikely point.
In truth, Amakhosi were dreadful and deserved nothing from the game, but Shaun Bartlett’s late, late header almost certainly saved coach Ernst Middendorp’s job — for now — and heaped the pressure on his opposite number at Pirates, Sredojevic.
Never in recent times have the jobs of coaches of both Soweto giants been under so much threat this early in the season. The fact that both could lose their jobs before the year is out is staggering.
Middendorp believes there is an internal club plot to oust him, and has accused certain players of being involved. It appears, from what I have heard from within the camp, that this is little more than paranoia from a man desperate to seek answers on why he has failed to ignite a squad who have won two of the past three league titles.
And Sredojevic has just about the perfect team, from goalkeeper to the midfield, but despite searching the length and breadth of Africa, he has failed to find a striker to convert regularly the numerous chances his creative midfield lay on for them.
Just as Stuart Baxter was largely undone as Bafana Bafana coach by failing to find an answer to his fullback problems, Sredojevic looks likely to suffer from the fact that his team outplay their opponents all over the park — except in the six-yard box.
I am not a fan of chopping and changing coaches and would like to see both men given until the end of the season to turn things around — especially Sredojevic. He has proven himself a fighter before, but it remains to be seen whether he has enough to dodge a bullet this time round.
Nick Said is editor: special projects for Kick Off magazine