One of the most sublime moments in last week’s Soweto derby, a match in which Orlando Pirates were defeated 3-1 by their rivals, Kaizer Chiefs, was Knowledge Musona capitalising on lax defending by Pirates’ Rooi Mahamutsa.
An ill-considered back pass by Mahamutsa was seized on by Musona, racing towards the goal, who lobbed the ball over an advancing Pirates keeper, Moeneeb Josephs. Still under pressure from Mahamutsa, the striker looked up to check whether the assistant referee had raised his flag to signal an off-side, but the official’s flag was pointing towards the earth and Musona seized the moment to head the ball into an unguarded net.
This display of intelligence, awareness and nimble footedness took seconds. It was a moment that probably escaped most people in the stadium but not those following the match closely on television.
This quick thinking and even quicker feet is probably what Chiefs’ team manager Bobby Motaung and assistant coach Donald Ace Khuse foresaw when they brought in Musona, Zhaimu Jambo and Thomas Sweswe (the player whose progress the Chiefs’ scouts had been monitoring) to Naturena. When Motaung arrived back with this seemingly underwhelming retinue of players, he was quizzed by the team’s demanding fans. On radio talk shows and news websites they sneered at the inclusion of Jambo and Musona, describing them as bonsella — Chiefs had bought one player and got two for free.
Motaung and Khuse must be chuckling in private. “I told our fans to give him a chance as time would tell. We know what we do and we can see talent,” Motaung said in a telephone interview with the Mail & Guardian.
In July this year Musona was acknowledged with the Premier Soccer League (PSL) Rookie of the Year award.
Motaung, recalling his visit to Zimbabwe, said he had gone with Khuse to watch Sweswe play when they happened to see a reserve game in which Musona played a part. “We could see he was a gifted player with an awareness for goal,” Motaung said. “[Chiefs’ Zimbabwean midfielder] Tinashe Nengomashe had told us about him and we had done our own analysis.”
Eye for the impossible pass
McDonald Muvimi, Musona’s high school teacher, now in Krugersdorp, isn’t surprised by the remarkable progress of the striker. Muvimi, who also doubled as football coach at St Eric’s, a school in Norton, 40km south of Harare, said: “We always thought he would be better than what he actually is at the moment.”
Muvimi said the sports gene is in the family. Musona’s elder brother, George, is a gifted player and their sister, Patience, is a talented netball player.
Muvimi recalled the slightly built player in the senior school side — a 14-year-old competing with older, more solidly built players. “He was very cautious as they used to rough him up,” Muvimi said. But, although they made it difficult for him, he still outwitted them with his close control of the ball, bursts of speed and, perhaps his greatest asset, vision — his eye for the impossible pass.
The provincial junior football bureaucracy noticed this remarkable talent and drafted him into a junior regional team, Mashonaland West.
Percy Huzha, a former schoolmate, remembers him as wonderfully gifted player. “I remember him as very flexible, exceptionally good. Now he is a bit bigger; then he was very small.”
In 2007 the then 17-year-old played in the final of the Cosafa Under 20 Championship that pitted South Africa against Zimbabwe. Coming on as a substitute as the match was heading for a goalless draw, Musona scored a hat-trick in a blistering half-hour siege of South Africa’s goal.
The grand stage
“I’ve never scored a hat-trick before so to do it in such a big game feels amazing,” he told Kick Off, a football magazine. “When I was warming up on the sidelines I had noticed some gaps in the South African defence and I was hoping I could go on and do something.”
Musona isn’t an out-and-out striker — he plays off a conventional number nine — yet when he scores, it’s often hat-tricks. In the match against Pirates he scored two goals and his cross ricocheted off Daine Klate’s leg into the Pirates’ net.
Musona is now on a grand stage, a platform far removed from his days at non-professional Norton club sides, Manyame and Haka United, teams in the lower rungs of Zimbabwe’s football leagues, and the Black Aces football academy. In fact Musona has the distinction of not playing in Zimbabwe’s Premier League although he has been called up to play for the Zimbabwean national team since his exploits in Chiefs’ colours.
Although Musona made his debut in August last year, Chiefs’ coach Vladimir Vermezovic used him sparingly and with indifferent results, but that spell ended at last year’s annual Macufe tournament in Mangaung. Khuse, sitting on the bench that day in the absence of the Chiefs’ coach, threw in the striker who scored a hat-trick to help Chiefs defeat Bloemfontein Celtics 3-1. “He’s humble and we don’t want to put him under pressure,” Motaung said.
Some would say scoring two goals and creating the other against your team’s biggest rivals is placing yourself right in the vortex of pressure, but Musona seems to be able to handle it. He could reach the heights attained by his compatriots Peter Ndlovu, Benjani Mwaruwaru and the player who resembles Musona most, Moses Chunga, a brilliant link-man who scored 45 goals in one season in the late 1980s while playing from midfield.