While Ramahlwe Mphahlele and his new teammates at Kaizer Chiefs celebrated registering back-to-back wins for the first time this season on Saturday, his old teammates at Mamelodi Sundowns were celebrating reaching the final of the CAF Champions League.
That’s the transition Mphahlele has had to make after leaving a Sundowns team that he captained to Absa Premiership and Telkom Knockout glory, joining a Chiefs side that finished last season empty-handed.
Mphahlele might not carry the emotional baggage from Chiefs’ disappointing campaign last season. He arrived at Naturena with two gold medals, but he has inherited the pressure the club is in, to return to the heights they occupied two seasons ago - back then Mphahlele was at the Brazilians, where he watched the league go back-and-forth between these two clubs in the last four seasons. If that pattern is to continue, Amakhosi have to wake up from their slumber and challenge a seemingly unstoppable Sundowns side.
“It’s not easy to build a winning team,” Mphahlele said. “You need everyone to buy into what you want to do and share the same goals as the coach. As the players, we have to support what the coach wants and try and implement it on the pitch. The most important thing, for me, is the spirit among the guys. We have to be honest with each other, at training and in the game.”
Wednesday, Amakhosi will be looking to make it three wins in a row when they visit Free State Stars in Orkney at James Motlasi Stadium. They will go into this match confident after back-to-back wins over Highlands Park and Maritzburg United. But it took a penalty, conceded outside the box, for them to beat Highlands, while the Team of Choice spent the better part of last season fighting to avoid relegation. The victories have brought confidence but they didn’t come pretty, as coach Steve Komphela has preached that he would like to win playing beautiful football.
“The coach has his philosophy,” Mphahlele said. “He wants us to play football and win games (with style). Not every game is going to be the way you plan it and come out as nicely as you planned it. The (Orlando) Pirates game where we beat them 2-0 (in the Carling Black Label Cup), it came out nicely. Everything was perfect. Not every game is going to be like that. Some games you have to grind to get the result. How we get the points doesn’t matter (at this stage), just as long as at the end of the game we have three points. There will be moments where we have space to play beautiful football. But we have to be strong to be able to grind the results.”
The foundation to get those results is slowly coming right. Chiefs kept clean sheets in both those wins. But that in itself shows where the club is at, celebrating small personal victories while their rivals, like Sundowns, are achieving bigger things. Mphahlele, though, doesn’t regret his switch.
“I am here now,” Mphahlele said. “Anything that happens on the other side (at Sundowns) is actually none of my business. I don’t want to look outside because I have made a decision and I have to live with that decision no matter what happens. Even if they go and win the Fifa Club World Cup, I have to live with the decision that I made. My focus is to try and help Kaizer Chiefs.”
The Star