You might believe that existentialist thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre have nothing to do with the hazardous task of predicting the fortunes of football matches and football seasons. You would be wrong.
For it was the French philosopher and Nobel laureate who, in what must have been an inspired moment, observed: ”Things in football are complicated by the presence of the other team.”
With that, the sagacious Sartre warned against making bold predictions about the fortunes of football clubs.
But some of us ignored him, and boldly declared that Mamelodi Sundowns boss Patrice Motsepe’s decision to hire three-time championship-winning coach Gordon Igesund was further proof of the mining magnate’s poor understanding of football.
Now, with seven games to go, Motsepe and Igesund are having the last laugh. The rest of us are gluttonously munching on humble pie. We have been proven wrong.
Igesund has, contrary to the false prophesy, led Sundowns not only to champions-elect status, but has done it with the ample finesse that merited their ”Brazilians” nickname.
Unlike teams such as Orlando Pirates, forced to resort to playing ugly so they could rack up wins, Sundowns have shown that the two need not be mutually exclusive.
The 60-odd touches passing spell in which Sundowns caused Kaizer Chiefs players to chase their shadows for about two minutes will stand out as testament to the confidence Igesund instilled in the side.
In that two-minute spell, Sundowns recaptured one of the few things that made life beautiful in the tear gas- and jackboot-ridden mid-1980s: Shoeshine and Piano football.
Only a dyed-in-the-wool bigot would begrudge Igesund his place among the leading football brains in the land. Only those who find it hard to say ”I got it wrong this time” could hold on to the view that he was the wrong coach for Sundowns.
This is not to pretend we don’t know that the three other teams he led to the championship played boring football — a point best illustrated by the group of frustrated Pirates fans who attacked him at the training ground when the team was leading the log and looking like champions.
He acknowledged that much, albeit backhandedly, while coaching Pirates, by remarking that there was no room for commentary on the scoreboard.
He did not exactly have a triumphant time as coach of Ajax Cape Town. Under his reign, Ajax were relegation candidates. Under Muhsin Ertugral, the same personnel, more or less, are up there contesting second spot.
However, there is an acceptance among more honest fans that the league race has been run and won by the Pretoria side.
The dearth of young players among those featuring weekly seems to be the biggest challenge for Sundowns. It is one area in which Igesund has never proved himself particularly strong, hence his failure at Ajax.
But it is a football aphorism that one is only as good as one’s last game. Reputations, good or bad, count for nought.
On the strength of his last game — in fact, the last nine league matches that he has won back to back — Igesund would be well within his rights to demand apologies all round, including from yours truly.
Under the Austria-born former Durban City and Highlands Park striker, players with potential have become great, like Lerato Chabangu. Excellent ones, like Surprise Moriri, have become phenomenal.
Jose Torrealba and Esrom Nyandoro are in the same league as Ernest Chirwali and Kennedy Malunga, as some of the best imports to have donned the yellow, blue and white first made famous by Brazil.
Moriri and fellow midfielder Godfrey Sapula’s contribution to the ”goals scored for” column shames that of those whose primary vocation is to score goals. There is already talk of Sapula being Player of the Season. If that happens, it would be the second year in a row that Sundowns have produced the best player in the land. Moriri is the reigning king of local football.
There have been preposterous suggestions in some quarters, including in a question posed to him in the Sunday Times, that the team is not following his instructions, that their flowing game is in spite of, rather than the result of, Igesund’s tactics.
This is probably a consequence of how his more successful teams have fared, and how it is often forgotten, even unknown among contemporary commentators, that Igesund was himself a rather skilful striker in his day.
Having flipped local opposition as though they were pancakes, with Santos, another of Igesund’s former championship winners, being the latest victims of the relentless juggernaut last weekend, it is appropriate that they look beyond the borders of the country for some challenge.
Sundowns take on Mozambican champions Desportivo Maputo in the African Champions League on Saturday night at the Johannesburg Stadium.
Maybe conquests on the continent will convince the remaining sceptics that Gordon Igesund is our own ”Special One”.