The local football landscape has changed significantly in the past few years, something that hasn’t favoured Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates, traditionally South Africa’s most powerful football teams.
With giant sponsors such as Absa, Nedbank, Telkom, MTN and SuperSport pumping money into the Premier Soccer League (PSL), some teams in the league have seized the opportunity to improve. But Chiefs and Pirates have become just other clubs on the football scene.
A football fan born in 1996 would not understand why Chiefs and Pirates are perceived as the country’s greatest football clubs. Or why the derbies in which they play are so hyped when they don’t determine who wins the championship, as happens with other fiercely fought derbies the world over.
The argument we are making is bolstered by the negligible number of league titles both teams have lifted since the PSL was founded in 1996. Unlike cup competitions where teams play about four matches and become champions, the league is the true test of the mettle of any team. It is a marathon that requires character, consistency and the discipline to endure the 30 matches.
Ted Dumitru, Mamelodi Sundowns’ technical director, argues that Chiefs and Pirates are now seen as mediocre teams because of their inconsistency on the field of play.
”The now-generation doesn’t really know Chiefs and Pirates as the big teams because they haven’t achieved that much to prove it. Back then we knew that these teams were the best in the country because of the good football they played and their achievements,” says Dumitru.
In the past 12 years, for instance, Chiefs have won the league only twice — in 2003/04 and 2004/05 seasons. Amakhosi also finished outside the top-eight bracket in 2001/2002 and 2006/07 seasons.
Rivals Pirates, on the other hand, have also won the league only twice, in the 2000/01 and 2002/03 seasons. Back in the Nineties Pirates were respected on the continent where they became the country’s first and only team to win the African Champions Cup, now known as the Champions League, in 1995. The team was honoured by former president Nelson Mandela for their achievement.
In 1996 the team won the African Super Cup. That’s a world away now.
A Pirates legend, Johnny ”Black Sunday” Masegela, points out that both teams have taken their dominance for granted and done nothing to ensure they stay at the top.
”What used to be small teams such as Golden Arrows have caught up with Chiefs and Pirates. Small teams work hard to get to the top and big teams think they will stay at the top forever. There are resources now compared with what we had but still both teams are not doing well at all.
”We got it right because we had quality players and we wore the Pirates jersey with pride. Now the teams are full of players who just show faces at the training session knowing they are going to get their salaries. Both teams just sign players for the sake of signing them. The club bosses need to sit down with all their stakeholders and try to find solutions to this,” said Masegela.
Their pettiness is shown by the ridiculous and ludicrous tussle over youngster Siphelele Mthembu. Instead of focusing on bringing back the glory days, both teams have in the last couple of months engaged in a bitter battle over little-known Mthembu, the former Maritzburg City striker. Both teams claim they legitimately signed Mthembu. The PSL dispute-resolution chamber has since ruled that Mthembu’s contract with Pirates is valid. One wonders if the youngster is really worth all of this trouble.
”The teams don’t have enough quality players; they have a number of mediocre players, which is why supporters get frustrated from time to time and move on to support other teams,” says Dumitru.
”We should have three or four big teams in the country who will carry the nation at all times and we don’t have that at the moment. What are supposed to be our big teams are going down. I think we are looking at the wrong models of football.
”If you look at the rough tackles, the number of yellow cards and the style of football played by our teams, our standard will continue to go down, especially that of the so-called big teams,” he says.
Inconsistency seems to be a Southern African norm. In Zimbabwe the most-supported side, Dynamos, went a decade without winning the coveted league title. They last won it in 1997 and were able to reclaim the title only last season.
In 1998 they reached the final of the champions league, losing to Côte d’Ivoire’s Asec Mimosas. It seems they are working on their wayward ways. This season they went as far as the semifinals of the African Champions league, beating fancied Egyptian side Zamalek along the way.
Similarly, Liverpool, in the English premier league, won the league seven times in the 1980s before, as Sir Alex Ferguson might say, they were ”knocked off their perch” by his Manchester United.
With the formation of the Premiership in 1992, a succession of mediocre coaches in Graeme Souness, Roy Evans and Gérard Houllier, and the rise of Manchester United and Arsène Wenger’s Arsenal, completed Liverpool’s dramatic fall.
If both Chiefs and Pirates continue to perform the way they have over the past 12 years, they will be known as ordinary teams in the PSL — no matter how illustrious their past.