Pitso Mosimane was recently appointed coach of the senior South African men’s football team Bafana Bafana. In this edited extract from the book PITSO MOSIMANE – CRY BABY OR MISUNDERSTOOD GENIUS, author Hosea P Ramphekwa provides insights into the coach’s deep attention to detail
Since his impressive foray into the coaching scene in 2001, before winning a lot of trophies, Mosimane has always set aside a few minutes to his tiny act. The act in itself is not an end but a means to an end. To the uninitiated, it seems meaningless but to connoisseurs it’s a critical element with the capability to prompt a philosophical or scientific probe into the life of one of the most outstanding football coaches in Africa.
And of course, Mosimane has a pre-match ritual of stepping on the pitch before his players can do their thing on the green. In his laid-back walk, Mosimane, whether he is in Atteridgeville, Lubumbashi, Cairo, Casablanca, Rabat, Marrakesh, Harare, Ndola, Tokyo or wherever, will stride onto the pitch casually.
Prior to a match, usually most teams in the PSL have players and officials walking around the pitch spraying and sprinkling substances, muthi in a form of liquid or powder, to influence the outcome of the match. It’s a long-standing tradition in South Africa. In Mosimane’s case, if his assertions of divine dependability are to be believed, muthi is out of question.
“Rena ra rapela ko Sundowns.A gona musi o tswelang ko dressing room.Musi okile wa winisa mang?(At Sundowns, we pray. There’s no smoke coming out of our dressing room. Who has ever won because of the smoke?” Mosimane told me and seven other journalists during lunch at Doppio Zero in Rosebank, Johannesburg on May 16, 2019.
With muthi tossed aside as a possible factor for Mosimane’s walks on the pitch, the probe behind his pre-match ritual gives a glance into the world of a man who leaves nothing to chance.
“It was the norm even from the time that we worked with him. When Pitso walks on the Lucas Moripe pitch, he wants to know what the size is. Has the grass been cut properly? Is the pitch level? That detail was very important to Pitso. We didn’t know why. Some of us don’t pay that attention,” Kwanele Kopo, Mosimane’s former assistant at SuperSport United, told me on the afternoon of June 27, 2019.
“Pitso pays attention to the smallest detail. He wants the ball to flow in a certain way. That talks to the height of the grass, the type of the grass. When the grass is green here and gray there, or light brown there, there’s an effect on the roll of the ball.”
In Mosimane’s world, the grass is an integral part of performance hence he scrutinises it vigorously. His preoccupation with the conditions of the grass reveals one of the characteristics that have catapulted him to the summit of coaching in the country and on the continent.
“His attention to detail is second to none,” Rulani Mokwena, Mosimane’s erstwhile assistant at Sundowns, told me on Friday evening, June 21, 2019. Mokwena revealed that Mosimane taught him about different types of grass and which type was used at which stadiums throughout South Africa.
“Pitso taught me the difference between rye and kikuyu. He told me which stadiums had rye type of grass and kikuyu type of grass. He taught me the dimensions of football fields in terms of lengths, widths and the importance of knowing things like that. Pitso is very peculiar about the grass. He wants it on certain length. The league says the leaf of the grass cannot be shorter than 22 centimetres. Pitso wants it to even be shorter to 20 centimetres, so that the ball skids and moves a little bit faster. He is extremely peculiar. The grass at Chloorkop must be cut and manicured to the best condition. It must be given very good treatment. He makes sure. He is on top of his game,” said Mokwena.
In South Africa, a country grappling with uniformity and identity in terms of
playing style, Mosimane has stood out with his teams playing the type of football based on creativity, collective and individual superiority, possession, building from the back and a variety of attacking elements. He had SuperSport playing soek soek football with an emphasis on possession and attack at high intensity. Matsatsantsa a Pitori grew into a fearsome force, giving top teams a run for their money.
“Pitso likes this possession-based game. Pitso’s teams want to dominate possession. They want to keep the ball. It’s not only about the tactics and the training, it is also about the surface that you play on. Even when Pitso coached SuperSport, when SuperSport played on a good surface, SuperSport can kill you because the surface talked to the type of football he wanted to play,” said Kopo, whose sentiments were echoed by the late Thulani Thuswa, former Sundowns communications manager.
“Pitso likes to play expansive football with quick movement but the ball must move more than the person. In order to achieve that you need the grass to be cut to a certain length. In order to achieve consistency of the ball speed, you need to spray the pitch on the surface so that it doesn’t become like
grease where it grabs but it moves quicker,” Thuswa told me over a cup of coffee at Starbucks at Mall of Africa in Waterfall on July 5, 2019.
“You have people like Hlompho Kekana, who pass the ball the way they pass, and you need a player like Khama Billiat to be able to receive the ball. You need to train that. At Sundowns, they train that and the grass is watered a certain way and when you play a match it must be the same condition as it was at training so that you can judge the ball like second nature.”
Whenever the pitch at Lucas Moripe Stadium, where Sundowns play some of the home games, is not at the level of Mosimane’s satisfaction, the outspoken coach is not shy to let those in charge know. Zama Aphane, the groundsman at the stadium, has at some point been on the receiving end of Mosimane’s lash owing to the condition of the pitch.
“I complained to the groundsman. You see it from the top – mooivanver (beautiful from afar). You see it from the top, very good, brilliant. It’s long, heavy. It’s very long. I spoke to Zama. I said to Zama ‘How do you have a long pitch like this? It’s on a Sunday, it works on the players’ legs you know,’” Mosimane said in post-match conference after Sundowns beat SuperSport 2-1 in a league match.
“I think the flow of the ball can be much quicker when the pitch is not spongy. It looks good from the top. He has looked after it. It doesn’t look good sometimes especially in winter but it’s a technique. He cuts it from the top. He needs to go a little bit down but when you go down a little bit, you see different colours. When you go on top, you see nice green pitch but he needs to go a little bit down. I think at Loftus, we have it a little bit right. The ball can move quicker and faster.”
- Pitso Mosimane – Cry Baby or Misdunderstood Genius is published by Hosea Books. The book retails at R350. See more details here: https://www.hoseabooks.com/product/pitso-mosimane-cry-baby-or-misunderstood-genius/
- Hosea Ramphekwa is a South African journalist, author, editor and publisher. This is his third book. He can be reached via e-mail on info@hoseabooks.com or via mobile on +27 72 502 6727
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