I
know we are always poking fun at our rivals, but we need not forget that we
need to do well for ourselves.It was a quite weekend from a Kaizer Chiefs
front, no news, no rumors from “reliable sources” and certainly no conspiracies
about the coach slapping his own players. For that I am glad. One thing though
that sort of caught my attention when I read the news this morning, is that
Free State Stars striker (or hotshot) Edward Manqele wants to play for Kaizer
Chiefs. This is according to a report by my favorite footy website in SA, kickoff.com:
Manqele told KickOff.com:
“I
am ready to move next season, provided the offer is right and Free State Stars
agree to let me move to another club,” he says. “I grew up supporting Kaizer
Chiefs and it is my dream to play for them.”
I’m
all for young/rare-to-find talent, so I was immediately excited by these news.
But as I read the rest of the report, I couldn’t help but notice that Manqele
is 24 years old and Free State Stars are his first top flight club. So he’s not
really young if you go by world standards. I say by world standards because
here in South Africa we refer to 27 year olds as youngsters.
He’s
not a youngster and this is a bit of a worry for me. I worry about whether he
will require further development and how many seasons we can get out of him,
should we make the signing. One thing I am not worried about is his talent,
he’s definitely got what it takes to make it, he’s showing it now at Free State
Stars. In his first season, he’s already leading the goal scoring charts.
Another Lehlohonolo Majoro hey? I just hope he’s got the ‘balls’ too. Because
if you ask Majoro, that’s what you need to have in order to make it at Kaizer
Chiefs.
On
a more serious note though, the one reason I will not get excited about this
one is because we’ve had of a lot of great players in the wanting to play for
Kaizer Chiefs. Some have even gone as far as professing their desire to play
for us on record to certain newspapers. You immediately think about what
happened to Siyabonga Sangweni. He said he wanted to play for Chiefs, but
because management took their time in
signing him, he ended up at Pirates. Remember Teko Modise? He also wanted to
play for Kaizer Chiefs. And a more recent example is that of ex-Wits captain
Sifiso Myeni who signed for Pirates after going on record saying he wants to
play for Chiefs.
There
are lots of players that wanted to play for us, we all knew about them,
including management, but we lost out because we were either too slow to act or
out in Zimbabwe looking for one of those ‘Buy one get one free’ deals. It is
the football manager’s job to spot talent and acquire it timely before the big
spenders come sniffing around. In this department, we’ve been let down season
after season. We’ve lost out on some of the best talent in the Premier Soccer League
because of this.
Will
it be any different with Manqele? Or will he end up at Mayfair or Mamelodi? We
shall wait and see.
By KhosiBlog
Twitter:
@khosiblog
