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13 February, 2023

#4 The Football Managers

It’s the month of love and the sentimentality around Valentine’s Day may prompt some lost lovers to reunite with each other – something all Premier Soccer League (PSL) fans are familiar with.

Gavin Hunt was the first DStv Premiership coach to reunite with an old club this season when he returned to SuperSport United after being thrown into the wilderness following the sale of Bidvest Wits at the end of the 2019/20 season. Despite a disastrous spell at Kaizer Chiefs in 2020/21 and a short-lived term at the unstable Chippa United in 2021/22, many were happy to see him back at the club, where he has won three out of his four league titles as head coach.

But Hunt wasn’t the only coach to return to his old club in the 2022/23 season: John Maduka was reappointed as the head coach of Royal AM following his exit from Maritzburg United – which he had joined from Royal AM – in November last year. Fadlu Davids, who occupied several roles at Maritzburg United, including head coach between 2017 and 2018, swiftly took over from Maduka ahead of the second half of the season.

Lastly, Dan Malesela, who coached Marumo Gallants between November 2021 and June 2022, returned to the club in September 2022 from Royal AM, although he’s no longer in charge after being placed on special leave at the end of January, following a string of poor results which left the Limpopo side at the bottom of the log.

I know this all sounds complicated, but we’ll slow this merry-go-round down as we delve into the PSL’s well-documented volatile employment practices.

And, of course, please get in touch with me if you have any comments or suggestions.

Mamaili

In today’s edition:
❌ Coaches relieved of their duties in 2022/23
💼 Clubs with the highest coaching turnover rates
⚽ This week’s profile: Cavin Johnson on the state of SA football
🚪 Revolving door of SA-based coaches

❌ Fired coaches

There have already been 11 coaching changes made by eight DStv Premiership clubs this season and perhaps the most significant was witnessing the controversial co-coaching appointments coming to an end at two of the four clubs that had this arrangement this season.

Defending champions Mamelodi Sundowns shocked everyone when they demoted Manqoba Mngqithi from his co-head coach position to senior coach 80 days after the team played its first league match because of “poor performances and unconvincing victories that the club has experienced for quite some time”. Rulani Mokwena, who was one-half of the two-time league-winning co-coaching duo, was retained as the sole head coach of the club.

Elsewhere, the cracks began to show. At the haphazard Royal AM, Dan Malesela cited the impracticality of co-coaching as his main reason for leaving the position he shared with Khabo Zondo and Abram Nteo to rejoin the Marumo Gallants 56 days after the KwaZulu-Natal-based side played its first league match. Royal AM has now ended that arrangement with the reappointment of John Maduka, who was relieved of his duties at Maritzburg United after 13 matches.

Richards Bay FC and Golden Arrows are are the two clubs where co-coaches remain in charge.

💼 Job insecurity in the DStv Premiership

If you like job security, you’ll probably want to steer clear of being a football manager. Half of the clubs in the DStv Premiership have already made coaching changes this season. Included in that count is Chippa United, which has made 36 coaching changes between 2012/13 and 2021/22. The Eastern Cape-based club was one of the first clubs to fire their coach this season – as expected.

Daine Klate, who got his professional coaching debut at Chippa, was relieved of his duties after just seven matches in charge, having suffered four defeats. Maritzburg United and AmaZulu, which have the second- and fourth-highest turnover rate during this period, have also made coaching changes in 2022/23, after starting the season with new coaches at the helm.

Generally, more than half of the DStv Premiership’s clubs begin the new season with new coaches and this has been the case in the last 10 seasons, excluding 2013/14 and 2019/20 when only seven out of the league’s 16 clubs began the new season with a new coach in charge.

South Africa’s top-flight clubs do not shy away from making changes to their technical teams at the earliest sign of poor results, with an average of 14 coaching changes made during the season over the last 10 seasons. Rulani Mokwena is the league’s longest-serving coach, having been promoted from assistant to manager at Mamelodi Sundowns in 2020/21.

Apart from Cape Town City’s Eric Tinkler and TS Galaxy’s Sead Ramović, who both joined their clubs as head coaches in 2021, the current crop of DStv Premiership coaches have all coached their teams for less than a year.

⚽ Sports Personality: In conversation with Cavin Johnson

Image sourced from goal.com

Cavin Johnson is an experienced football coach who came under the tutelage of the late Ted Dumitru, one of the Premier Soccer League’s (PSL) most respected coaches. Johnson led Platinum Stars to a second-place finish in 2012/13 in what was his first head coaching job.

In his second tenure at Platinum Stars, he guided the team to a third-place finish in 2015/16 after he found it languishing in the bottom-half of the table at position 10.

We spoke with Johnson to hear his thoughts on the football coaching landscape in South Africa. You can read the full interview here.

Some highlights:

On why stability in football is important: “When people invest in football, a lot of them think that football is a money-making business and I don’t think you make money from football in the first five years. But, at the same time, you have to have a vision and people behind you who want to improve the product and not change it too often. The coach is probably the one person you want to have as stable as possible within your club. The coach should know exactly what you want from the team and implement plans to achieve those goals.”

On management interference: “Wherever I have coached, I have always made it clear to club management that I don’t expect any kind of interference. Interference is something that other coaches in South Africa experience but they should nip it in the bud within their contracts. No team should interfere with what the coach plans to do on the field of play.”

On why coaches will always trump new football tech: “As a coach, you must physically see how a player runs, how he holds the ball, and the kind of decisions they make – that part of the game cannot be replaced by technology. I subscribe to the idea that if I can’t smell my players or look into their eyes, then I don’t know who they are or what they are capable of doing. Yes, technology is important but if you don’t have the feel of your players, then you don’t really know them.”

🪑 Coaching musical chairs

Several DStv Premiership clubs and coaches have tried to make their relationship work more than once, but some have proven to be inseparable over the years. Five of the currently active coaches in the league – Gavin Hunt (SuperSport United), Eric Tinkler (Cape Town City), Fadlu Davids (Maritzburg United), John Maduka (Royal AM), and Dan Malesela (Marumo Gallants) – have coached the teams they are currently contracted to for more than one tenure.

Malesela has been placed on special leave after poor results, with Dylan Kerr being roped in as a consultant for the foreseeable future. Malesela is no stranger to such arrangements, as he previously had an on-and-off relationship with Chippa United comprising five separate stints as a member of the club’s technical team, one as assistant coach, another as caretaker coach, and the rest as head coach of the club.

Muhsin Ertuğral (at Ajax Cape Town), Kinnah Phiri, Steve Komphela and Jacob Sakala (all three at Free State Stars), as well as Ernst Middendorp and Fadlu Davids (both at Maritzburg United) have had similar relationships with some of their former employers, having each completed more than three stints at their previous clubs over the years.

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Bye for now...

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