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WHEN the South African Premiership football season ends today, Kaitano Tembo could become the first Zimbabwean coach to lead a Supa Diski side to a third place in the league championship.
Victory for Tembo’s SuperSport United, in their final league match of the season against Cape Town City at Loftus Versfeld Stadium in Pretoria, will be enough to guarantee third spot on the table.
Even in defeat, they could still finish third, if results elsewhere go their way, and that could be the club’s highest-place finish since finishing third during the 2011-2012 season.
Since that season when they completed the campaign four points behind champions Orlando Pirates, SuperSport United have finished fifth in 2014, sixth in 2015, eighth in 2016, fifth in 2017, seventh in 2018 and sixth last year.
The club were 16 points adrift of champions Kaizer Cheifs in 2013, finished 21 points behind champions Mamelodi Sundowns in 2014, 28 points behind champions Chiefs in 2015, 31 points behind champions Sundowns in 2016, 12 points behind champions Bidvest Wits in 2017, 21 points behind champions Sundowns in 2018 and 13 points behind champions Sundowns last season.
However, this season, Tembo has transformed the club and, ahead of the final round of matches, they are just six points behind the leading two contenders for the title, Chiefs and Sundowns.
Things could have been different, had they not missed two penalties, in the 1-2 loss to Pirates a few days ago, given that victory in that game would have seen them trailing the two leading clubs by just three points, ahead of the Super Saturday fixtures this afternoon.
This would have meant Tembo and his men would have been firmly in the race for the league title because, since they would be having a superior goal difference, victory for them today, coupled with the two leading contenders losing their games, would have seen them being crowned champions.
Already, SuperSport United have silverware in their cabinet this season after Tembo guided them to success in the MTN8 Cup tournament and a third place finish will see them returning to the CAF inter-club tournaments, as South Africa’s representatives, in the Confederation Cup.
In a season in which the news, coming out of South Africa, for Zimbabwean football fans, has largely been the depressing story of how Warriors talisman Khama Billiat has struggled to illuminate the scene, Tembo’s success story has largely flown under the radar.
Maybe, it’s because there is a lot of fixation with the negative stuff when it comes to anything that has a Zimbabwean identity among those who generate the content, for the public to consume, on the South African media landscape.
That’s probably the reason why acres of spaces would rather be concentrated on providing graphic details of how Billiat has been struggling at Chiefs, rather than how Tembo has been writing a success story at SuperSport United.
It’s not easy for foreign coaches to thrive in the South African Premiership and, when Tembo was handed the job to take charge of SuperSport United, many voices questioned the decision, saying that was a gamble which would backfire spectacularly.
However, those who questioned the move are now being forced to eat humble pie as the Zimbabwean coach continues to show that he has earned his stripes and can stand toe-to-toe with the best coaches in the tough Supa Diski world.
There is something about Tembo, which should provide a lesson for many local football players and young coaches who dream of one day making it big in this field.
Unlike other local football personalities, who have self-destructed simply because they just couldn’t find a way to handle fame, Tembo has always been a perfect model of how to concentrate on the job that brings food to the table.
While many of his fellow Zimbabweans, who crossed the Limpopo in the ‘90s to play in South Africa, found themselves being lured into transforming themselves into wild party animals, and driving flashy cars, Tembo chose to concentrate on his job of playing football.
He knew his mission and never forgot that this game had plucked him from poverty, when he was growing up in Kadoma, to give him a decent life and, therefore, it needed to be respected, if he didn’t want to find himself going back to the life he left behind when he was a boy.
He became a bastion of loyalty, after arriving at SuperSport United, in 1999 and, when he was asked to spend time learning the ropes, when it comes to coaching, by taking charge of the club’s junior teams, he never complained, but used the opportunity to empower himself.
Even when the club appeared to ignore him, and hire coaches from elsewhere to take charge of the first team, we never heard him complaining because he knew the value of his mission and that his time would eventually come.
“I have coached the Under-17s, Under-19s, I have been an assistant coach, and coached the reserve team. It has been a huge journey for me and I still take it one day at a time,’’ he said.
“That is key for my development.’’
And, when others were using the Covid-19 lockdown to party, Tembo chose to use that window to boost his technical education and started a special class with the Spanish Football League, LaLiga, where he trained under the guidance of coaches from Celta Vigo and Athletic Bilbao.
“Education is key to the development of the game, and this can only be done by sharing knowledge with insiders and football experts,’’ he said.
Tembo is making us proud and, in the process, he is showing the next generation of our players, and coaches, how they should conduct themselves if they dream of one day writing similar success stories.
Online Reporter