Itumeleng Tau 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.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
It finished 0-3. A cup exit is a disappointment; this was a public dismantling, and the difference between the two is the number of people who will still be talking about it in August.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Bloemfontein Celtic is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Bloemfontein Celtic heard it as anything else.
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Itumeleng Tau 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.
A 1‑0 win over University of Pretoria, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Jomo Cosmos arrived with $120.0K and left with the best player in the building. The board will call it business; the queue at the ticket office will use other words.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Sifiso Vilakazi was one of the reasons people came, and $120.0K does not replace that by itself.
“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 The request is on a desk at Bloemfontein Celtic, and it is not being withdrawn.
Williams Furman 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.
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. 11 actions, 6.51, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.