Marked for Dumisani Msibi
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad31 Aug 2026
Abram Mashele damages knee ligaments — 42 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 42 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.
Market31 Aug 2026
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Chippa United can pretend not to have heard.
Squad31 Aug 2026
There were 6 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Market31 Aug 2026
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Goodman Mosele 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.
Squad31 Aug 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Marked 8.16 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Match29 Aug 2026
It needed Azola Matrose to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Free State Stars, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Shots: 4. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad17 Aug 2026
Goodman Mosele 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.
Match15 Aug 2026
Ajax Cape Town left with the points after a 0‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad17 Aug 2026
The manager makes an example of Dumisani Msibi
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Asanele Bonani 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.
Market17 Aug 2026
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Sirgio Kammies has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at Chippa United.
Market17 Aug 2026
Both sides expect a conversation in the coming days. Chippa United will name a price, and everything after that is arithmetic.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Shots: 7, enough of them from close enough that a striker in form scores two. He is not a striker in form.
Squad17 Aug 2026
The plan did not have a place for Goodman Mosele
Nobody at Chippa United is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
5.55 on the card. Some afternoons a footballer looks like a man who has only just been introduced to the game, and this was one of them.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market10 Aug 2026
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Goodman Mosele 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.
Boardroom10 Aug 2026
2 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 19. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market10 Aug 2026
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Ramahlwe Billiat has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Market10 Aug 2026
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Gift Jali has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Squad10 Aug 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Justice Figuareido, and the manager let it.
Market10 Aug 2026
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
Boardroom10 Aug 2026
Chippa United turn down the training-ground plan
It is the quietest way a club tells you what its ambitions are. The money was asked for, the money was refused, and the people who work there every day now know exactly where they stand.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market3 Aug 2026
The bid was some way short and Chippa United did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Abbubaker Mobara commits to Chippa United for another 2 years.
Squad3 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Chippa United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words at Chippa United training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Giovanni Philander 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.
Market3 Aug 2026
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.