Many football fans know Pitso Mosimane and Manqoba Mngqithi as the high-profile coaches at Mamelodi Sundowns, but forget there’s also Rhulani Mokwena who completes the ‘three musketeers’ of coaches of the Ka BoYellow first team. Mokwena shares how it is to work at Sundowns and what he also brings to the yellow-table that saw the club win their first African Champions League trophy last year. “I’ve been fortunate enough to travel the world. I’ve done my Italian course in 2007 when I was still at Platinum Stars. I’ve travelled to Germany where I met coaches from Borussia Dortmund, Bayer Leverkusen, and Barcelona in 2009; I’ve gone to Manchester and I’ve just comeback from Liverpool, ”Mokwena tells KICK OFF in this exclusive interview.
KICK OFF: Everyone knows Pitso Mosimane. Briefly tell the KICK OFF readers who Rhulani Mokwena is?
RHULANI MOKWENA: I would describe myself as a coach that is a technician, a student of the game, a young man that has always had the expectations of becoming one of the best coaches in the country. I’m not fortunate enough to have played football; I believe I had the ability to make it, but didn’t due to other circumstances, and maybe also due to the calling and fulfilling a greater purpose. I ended up as a coach, but not by default. I’m a football scholar and I’m a student of the game, that’s the purpose I’m fulfilling.
How and when did your love of coaching start?
To be honest with you, I don’t know. My earliest childhood memory was going to Orlando Stadium ... I remember as a young child being in the change-room, and I can’t even remember who the coach was.
My father [Julius Sono] was playing for Pirates and the coach was busy with the chalkboard – I think I was two or three years old if I’m not mistaken. The other boys were kicking the ball and running around, but I was busy with the chalkboard trying to write what the coach had written on the tactical board.
And I remember the tactical board was black with chalk and when I look back I think those were already the signs of a mutual sort of attraction between me and the coaching board.
In this moment in time I can reflect to connect the dots. I’m then able to realise that I’m probably serving a greater calling. And I think I was 14 when I started taking training sessions with 11-year-olds in Soweto at a club called Triple S [Sabelo Super Stars FC].
Already then I was really working hard to put together training sessions and drills, and I think that’s when I fell in love with coaching.
This story is from the March 2017 edition of Kickoff.
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This story is from the March 2017 edition of Kickoff.
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