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.
Keagan Mkhize 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.
$200.0K from Golden Arrows for Luther Kekana. Money is money, but the dressing room has lost the man it looked to.
The terraces28 Jun 2027
Supporters turn on the $200.0K sale of Luther Kekana
He is going to Golden Arrows, the club has $200.0K it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Ajax Cape Town is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Njabulo Blom 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.
At 28 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
The terraces28 Jun 2027
Ajax Cape Town spend $57.0K on the signing the town wanted
It is the rarest sequence in football: supporters ask for something, and the club goes and does it. $57.0K for Keagan Mkhize, and for one week nobody is complaining about anything.
Nobody at Ajax Cape Town 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.
In brief
SquadKermit Modiba falls out with a teammate over standards
The words a physio says slowly. 118 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 46 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Keagan Mkhize was one of the reasons people came, and $57.0K does not replace that by itself.
The words a physio says slowly. 125 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 53 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
The words a physio says slowly. 132 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Free State Stars will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Two goals and a mark of 8.77 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Siphesihle Ndlovu 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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Vinícius Cortês has just signed for Free State Stars, and for once the answer mattered.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Keagan Mkhize and Free State Stars agree another 1 years.
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.
One weekend, judged against everybody else's. Luther Williams has come out on top of it, and for most footballers a weekly award is the only silverware a career ever produces.
6 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 5 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Free State Stars this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Keagan Mkhize and Free State Stars agree another 1 years.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
Chances created: 5. 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.
4 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Free State Stars this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Aden McCarthy is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
A midfielder is measured on whether the team functions when he is on the pitch, which is nearly impossible to see and completely obvious in retrospect. 12 actions, 6.75, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.
0‑3 to Bidvest Wits, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Free State Stars may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Aden McCarthy 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Free State Stars this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Oscar Gqeke is 20, and Free State Stars have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Free State Stars this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The award is a small thing with a heavy meaning: for four weeks nobody in this division did his job better. Free State Stars have the trophy on a shelf and the player in the side.
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Kermit Manyama has come out of that comparison in the side, and Free State Stars have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
The words a physio says slowly. 46 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Free State Stars can pretend not to have heard.
Keagan Mkhize 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.
Rivaldo Mabunda is 18, and for one weekend he was the best of everybody his age in the division. Nobody should build a career on it and everybody quietly does.