Mamelodi Sundowns’ coach Pitso Mosimane isn’t worried about his job after the club hired decorated Swedish coach Erik Hamren as head of technical.
Hamren has won three league titles, two in Norway and one in Denmark and in both countries he was named Manager of the Year. His last coaching job was managing the Swedish national team, a post he held from 2009-2016. Hamren took Sweden to the 2014 Fifa World Cup along with the 2012 and 2016 European Championships.
It’s an impressive CV that makes him a good addition to the Sundowns’ brains trust. But the role of technical director in the country has a lot of stigma associated with it. A number of coaches in the country have been replaced by those technical directors which has created the impression that the appointments are made to push the coach out.
“How can I be (worried about my job)? No! I am not. I can’t do everything. I can’t coach eight satellites and seven teams in the youth. There’s a lot of work,” Mosimane said.
Jingles has transformed the Brazilians from a team of overpaid prima donnas who brought nothing in return for the millions Patrice Motsepe invested into an all-conquering side by adding two league titles to the five the club already had.
In 2016 Mosimane gave Motsepe the Caf Champions League crown he has always been obsessed with having rescued the club relegation after taking over from Johan Neeskens who left Sundowns at the bottom of the log in 2012.
Motsepe recently said that he would like Mosimane to be the Alex Ferguson of Sundowns, a long servant of the club just like Ferguson who spent 27 years managing Manchester United.
“Erik is head of technical,” Mosimane said. “Erik is coming to help us a lot…He is coming to help us on the senior team and the youth, more on the youth. We have a lot of work on the youth. We have about eight satellites in Pretoria and seven teams in the youth up to the MDC (reserve team that plays in the MultiChoice Diski Challenge). We are trying to intensify that so that we can speed up the process of producing players like Keletso (Makgalwa). I think that it was the good time to bring him up just like we did with (Motjeka) Madisha and Percy Tau from the MDC. So we aren’t that bad in that regard (promoting players from within) and they are quality. We are trying to speed up that process.”
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