2 in front and in complete control, and it finished with Maritzburg United the happier side. There is no version of this afternoon that Ajax Cape Town will enjoy reviewing.
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.29, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 11 signed and 4 gone
That is the business done at Ajax Cape Town until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Ajax Cape Town offered $670.0K; Polokwane City said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ajax Cape Town this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The young player of the month award goes to a 20-year-old at Ajax Cape Town who has looked like the finished article for four weekends running. The next four are the ones that decide whether he is.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Ajax Cape Town have lost him in all but the paperwork.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Luke Baartman is living that version at Ajax Cape Town, and it tends to show in the first month.
The offer went to Polokwane City this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
The deal with SuperSport United is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
Ajax Cape Town asked and Young Boys said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
At 20 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Ajax Cape Town can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ajax Cape Town this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Ajax Cape Town offered $25.0K; Golden Arrows said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
Level with 87 minutes on the clock, after an afternoon Ajax Cape Town had all but put away. University of Pretoria will call it a point earned; the home dressing room will call it two given away, and both of them are right.
5 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
Rivaldo Zwane, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 7.82
A mark of 7.82 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Kermit Mokotjo 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.
Ajax Cape Town have gone to Kaizer Chiefs with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
The offer went to Golden Arrows this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Ajax Cape Town are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
$4.4M is a serious amount of money and it does not play centre-forward. Everybody in the dressing room knows who used to be looked at when it went wrong.
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Torpedo Kutaisi had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
Two goals and a mark of 8.52 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
He is going to FC Midtjylland, the club has $4.4M 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 had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Lecce keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Ajax Cape Town hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Kermit Mokotjo and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
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 phone has started ringing about Itumeleng Kekana again, and this time the name on the line is Hearts of Oak. Ajax Cape Town are listening politely and promising nothing.
Mamelodi Sundowns have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
Ajax Cape Town have made the call to Lecce. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Ajax Cape Town, and both men came out saying it was fine.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Ajax Cape Town has been clear about where Bradley Mphela stands, which is more than many ever get.