So, Pitso Mosimane and Shakes Mashaba were breaking bread at the weekend, probably smoking the peace pipe and having a good laugh over some Egyptian cuisine.
I assume the cat-and-mouse game the Mamelodi Sundowns and Bafana Bafana coach were playing can be declared over now? Good news for the national team. For we can count on the Brazilians, who were on Sunday crowned champions of Africa, making their top players available in future regardless of the magnitude of a Bafana assignment.
Bra Shakes made the trip to North Africa as Mosimane’ s guest. Yes, everyone’s quite surprised. The two coaches had been at each other’s throats for several weeks now over the use of Sundowns players in two recent Bafana matches. Mosimane wanted Tebogo Langerman, Hlompho Kekana and Keagan Dolly left out of the national team’s dead-rubber 2017 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) qualifier against Mauritania in September, but Mashaba dragged them all the way to Nelspruit and then back again to Johannesburg for a friendly against Egypt in the Nelson Mandela Challenge a couple of days later.
Mashaba had taken offence that Mosimane - a former Bafana coach - had used the media to get his message across instead of doing things mano a mano and following a protocol he knows all too well. He had a point, the now-Champions League-winning coach had informed anyone who cared to pay attention that Bafana’s two matches were meaningless and his players had better things to do, such as being with the rest of the Sundowns squad ahead of facing Zambia’s ZESCO United away from home in the first leg of their semi-final encounter of the continental competition. Mosimane should have known better, but Mashaba could have also been a little more understanding.
Sundowns beat ZESCO and made it to the final, and before the dust could settle, daggers were out again barely a month later ahead of them facing Zamalek over two legs. I’m telling you, folks, it never stops. Mashaba was the one throwing shade at Mosimane, who had apparently gone by the right channels this time around - writing a formal letter to Safa to ask that Langerman, Kekana and Dolly be excused from a friendly fixture against Ghana in Durban a few days following Bafana’s return from Burkina Faso, where they would play in a 2018 World Cup qualifier opener.
“Let me be frank, I don’t normally respond to public utterances. I don’t want to stoop that low. Pitso is a coach, he knows I am a coach. And there is what we call coaching ethics, ours is not so say let’s go sit over a cup of coffee,” Mashaba said while in Ouagadougou. “Give me a call and say coach, I have this problem and how can we sort it out”, instead of telling people about what (former Bafana coach Carlos) Parreira did. I am not Parreira, I am Ephraim and Pitso knows the procedures. We are all coaches and the way he is doing things, it’s like we are enemies.”
Well, I guess Mosimane bought some airtime and data and rang Shakes up.
Follow Mazola Molefe on Twitter@superjourno
The Star