Football again. Teko Modise who plays for Orlando Pirates is the new poster boy of South African football. Well local football. He made the back pages of newspapers, dominated discussions on radio call in programs or highlight reels. That he scored 2 goals in a friendly (I know) against Cameroon only helped his cause.
Most of South Africa’s best or promising players have left to play in European leagues. The best — Benni McCarthy and Aaron Mokoena at Blackburn Rovers and Steven Pienaar at Everton — ply their trade in the English Premier League. Bryce Moon plays for Panathinaikos in Greece and Elrio van Heerden for Club Brugge in Belgium. The rest take offers to play in Russia, China, Vietnam, Norway and even the United States. That’s good for the player (and crucially their agents), but the local league suffers as a result. Now Teko predictably is talking about leaving. As he told the BBC: “Everyone needs to step up their game and look to the future. The best way of doing that has to be going to Europe and playing against the best players in the world to test ourselves.” He also cited the Nigerian national team: “If you take the example of Nigeria, 95 percent of their national side play in Europe and it has only benefited them.” He may have a point. But Nigeria has not won a major tournament for perhaps the better part of a decade, while Egypt where the bulk of the players local football, have won the African Nations Cup twice in recent times. Teko has been linked to West Ham United and Newcastle in the EPL. Hope it works out.
But as football historian (and fan) Peter Alegi reminded me it will be tough for Teko to do well in such a physically imposing league like the English Premier League. “Maybe a second-tier UEFA league would be better for him? Pienaar, for instance, played [for Ajax] in the Netherlands before Everton . . . and so did other Africans (Mahamadou Diarra of Malifor example).”
The other outstanding players I noticed was striker Mabhuti Khanyeza–I saw him play for Ajax Cape Town in an exciting draw with Santos in front of a capacity crowd at a (an almost finished) refurbished Athlone Stadium–and Siphiwe Tshabalala, a Kaizer Chiefs player.
(BTW, on other football impressions from my recent visit to South Africa: World Cup fever is in full effect. I saw the incomplete Green Point stadium. If it is completed on time, it will be nice (one of the semi-finals of the World Cup 2010 will be played there. Oh, and the satellite TV service, Supersport, does a better job of broadcasting the local game than the sadly fast declining public broadcaster SABC.)
