Polokwane City are out and SuperSport United go through, 1‑1 the final word. The bracket opens up a little, and everyone allows themselves a look at it.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at SuperSport United, and it is not being withdrawn.
1 kept out in the shoot-out, and a stadium that will still be describing them in twenty years. A goalkeeper only needs one of these to be remembered forever.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at SuperSport United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Dean Manyama falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Chances created: 14. Not on the scoresheet and not remotely anonymous — a passing performance that pulled a defence apart without leaving a mark on the column that gets read.
Squad13 Sep 2027
Ethan Visagie has improved at 25, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Dean Dala was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Add another name to the list: Golden Arrows have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Percy Mphela. The answer from SuperSport United has not changed — yet.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Ronwen Modiba was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
It is the rarest sequence in football: supporters ask for something, and the club goes and does it. $570.0K for Angelo Van Rooi, and for one week nobody is complaining about anything.
There is a level at which a footballer stops being tested and starts being contained, and he reached it some time ago. SuperSport United know it, and so does everybody who watches him.
Nobody at SuperSport United will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Percy Lorch was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Anthony Uzodimma and SuperSport United agree another 4 years.
The board have answered with money instead of encouragement, which is the only answer a manager ever wants. Spending it well is now entirely his problem.
There is exactly one of these per career and it does not usually go like this. 1 on the scoresheet, 7.73 beside the name, and a crowd that had never seen him before chanting it by the end.
At 19 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.