Lack Of Ambition Stunting SA Clubs in the Transfer Market.

The mid-season transfer window has come and gone and we can all breathe easy agin after the delirium caused by the rumour mill. Well, in South Africa, the rumour mill isn't as active as the one overseas with most clubs only admitting interest in players only after they've signed on the dotted, except for Kaizer Chiefs who would rather unveil a player's jersey complete with name and number hoping they will sign eventually; but Eric Matoho’s jersey is a story and a laugh for another day. 

Anyways, last month, fans of local football were treated to a tasty little rumour linking former France and Manchester United striker, Louis Saha, with a possible move to either Mamelodi Sundowns or Bidvest Wits. Now I would have thought such news would have been greeted with inordinate amounts of excitement, I for one would love to see Louis Saha play and do well in the PSL, whether it is for the team I support or not. Sadly though, if twitter is anything to go by, much of the local response to Saha possibly signing for a South African team was negative. A few 'lols' and these (:''D) smiley faces and sentiments of "how the mighty have fallen" were the order of the day.

I think South Africans underestimate the professional league over here. It is as competitive as any in Europe where any team could any other on any given day. I mean for the bulk of the first half of the season, Sundowns, one of the richest and most successful clubs in the PSL era were languishing at the very bottom of the log table. I think South Africa and the league over here are very attractive. You need only look at some of the players who have played for South African clubs in the past and presently. For instance UEFA Champions League winner Benni McCarthy signed for PSL champions, Orlando Pirates; former Netherlands and Liverpool goalkeeper Sander Westerveld plays for Ajax Cape Town; Luis Boa Morte, an ex Portugal and Arsenal winger had a brief stint with Pirates; and in years past Manchester United legend George Best left the Old Trafford club to join the Jewish Guild, a Johannesburg based club that competed in the old National Football League.

There is a lot of money pumped in the game here, only last year Supersport paid the PSL over a billion rand for the leagues TV rights and Vodacom extended their sponsorship of Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs to the tune of R500 million. While our clubs cannot compete with the salaries paid by the upstarts in China and Russia, they do have enough financial muscle to put together offers good enough to lure big name players.

I feel that the only thing stopping PSL clubs from making offers to Rio Ferdinand for instance who is in the last few months of his contract at Man United is ambition. I often point to the example of David Beckham, the LA Galaxy and MLS when I say that local clubs need to have greater ambition in recruiting players. It took a bold offer from the Galaxy to make Beckham, who was at Real Madrid at the time, an offer so good he couldn't resist. And other MLS clubs followed suit and raised their ambitions too, which is why you see heavyweights like Thierry Henry, Rafael Marquez and Robbie Keane playing in the US now. Since Beckham signed with the Galaxy, the MLS has become arguably the most polished league outside of Europe. A recent show of the ambition I am talking about is the signing of Juventus great Alessandro del Piero who said he turned down an offer from Liverpool to sign instead for Sydney FC who compete in Australia's A-League. Ordinarily,  a side like Sydney would have no hope of landing Del Piero especially going up against Liverpool but with enough currency and a heap of ambition, not only was the deal possible but they made it happen.

Can South African clubs match the ambition displayed by LA Galaxy and Sydney FC? I sure hope so. It starts with clubs signing players like McCarthy and others following suit and snapping up players like Saha and other big name players. Hopefully SA’s football clubs can step up their transfer ambitions in the coming windows and who knows, we could be talking about Mark van Bommel joining Ajax Cape Town or Nicolas Anelka or his jersey signing for Kaizer Chiefs.

The Curious Case of Benedict Button Vilakazi

Mawande writes...

A story of a cheat, failure or half fulfilled potential?

Considering I was a massive fan of Benedict Vilakazi in times gone by, I must admit that I am a little disappointed that his career never hit the highs I and many professionals thought he would or deserved to.

At one point, he was probably the brightest young player in the country. Benedict Vilakazi burst on the South African football scene as a 17 year old in the Vodacom Challenge in the colours of Orlando Pirates in 1999. He seemed quite an accomplished footballer from very early on, earning high praise from his coach at the Buccaneers at the time, one Gordon Igesund. He rose to stardom fairly quickly, captaining the SA under 20 and under 23 teams very early in his career and earned his first cap for the senior national team when he was only 20 years old.

Bafana Bafana: Coulda been an all-time great.

Ordinarily, you might expect the story of an exceptionally talented youngster with great achievements notched up early in his career to go on to bigger things and achieve legendary status by the end of the story. However, the story of the man dubbed 'Tso' by fans has not ended that way. At the relatively young age of 30, when perhaps many other midfielders of high acclaim reach the peak of their powers, Tso, no longer plays professional football. When you take time to look at how some players of Tso's generation, think Steven Pienaar and perhaps Siyabonga Nomvethe are playing the best football of their careers, it begs the question how this came to be.

Captain. All Time Record Goal scorer. Legend

At Orlando Pirates, Tso is a cult figure. He played in 170 games for the Sea Robbers and is the club's all-time record goal scorer with 58 goals. I don't think there can be any doubt that he played his best football in the black and white of Pirates. Sadly for football, it was all before he turned 25. From very early on in his career though, Tso was labelled as an age cheat in some corners, and looking at how the rest of his career panned out, it's possible to believe such. He moved to Danish club Aalborg in 2007 where he only featured in 5 games for the club before returning home after only one season in 2008. By the time he was playing for Mamelodi Sundowns, he looked like a player who was passed it. Sure, his time in Denmark was plagued by illness which hampered his chances of making it big over there, but was his time out of the game such an impediment that he would return a totally different player?

European Expedition: In the colours of AAlborg BK.

After his return from Europe, Vilakazi only played in 50 professional games between 2008 and 2012. A period troubled with indiscipline on his part and inconsistency in his performances. For my mind, it would seem to suggest that he had been caught out. He just didn't perform like a man in his twenties. I think it is quite peculiar that a precocious talent such as Vilakazi would earn the last of his 31 caps for Bafana Bafana at age 25 His performances from the time he was 25, on official records, didn't improve with age and experience up until the time of retirement.

It just wasn't the same

The last club he played for, Black Leopards did release him from his contract because he was found to have an unspecified medical condition. It may be that this is the same condition that dogged him in Denmark and that it did adversely affect his performances on the pitch and it may well be a valid reason for his retirement. But I'm always going to wonder if his "30 year old” legs gave in and couldn't carry him any longer.

Perhaps Benedict Vilakazi was one of the lucky ones who got to play professional football at all. Few get to play at the levels he did and up until the age that he did. Other tremendously talented footballers like Patrick Mbuthu, Thabiso “Skapie” Malatsi and Junior Khanye, to name a few, didn’t accomplish half of what Tso achieved in his career. To be quite honest though, I cannot be sure if the story of Benedict Vilakazi is one of an age cheat who lived the high life but was eventually out or a supremely gifted magician who failed in reaching the heights that he ought to or indeed half fulfilled his potential.