Two trebles in a year – all hail Pitso Mosimane!
Three domestic trophies with Sundowns have been followed by a domestic double at Al Ahly and the Caf Champions League.
Al-Ahly player Hussein El Shahat (L) has been suspended for thir game against Palmeiras and head coach Pitso Mosimane (R) will have to field another player in his place. Picture: EPA/KHALED ELFIQI.
Pitso Mosimane has won a treble in two different countries in under a year, a feat that is most-likely unprecedented in the modern game.
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The former Mamelodi Sundowns head coach won the Egyptian Cup with Al Ahly over the weekend, beating El Gaish, the conquerors of Zamalek in the semifinals, in a penalty shoot out in the final at the Borg El Arab Stadium to add to their Egyptian Premier League title and the Caf Champions League.
This followed a 2019/20 season at Sundowns in which Masandawana won the Telkom Knockout, the DStv Premiership and the Nedbank Cup. If you take into account that the Telkom Knockout final win over Maritzburg United was on December 14, 2019, that is six trophies sealed in under 12 months, an astonishing achievement by any standard.
The caveat, of course, is that the Egyptian Premier League was sealed by the time Mosimane arrived at Ahly in October, while he also only had to get through the semifinals and final of the Caf Champions League. Nevertheless, the fact that ‘Jingles’ did exactly this, winning Ahly their first Champions League in seven years, is no small feat.
Ahly are unbeaten, indeed, since Mosimane joined them, and there could yet be another trophy this week, with the Red Devils set to face RS Berkane in the Caf Super Cup final on Thursday, though the Moroccan side have protested the decision to play the game in the Egyptian capital Cairo.
Mosimane, meanwhile, clearly also has an eye back home on Sundowns, where Manqoba Mngqithi and Rulani Mokwena, with a dose of Steve Komphela too, have guided the team to the top of the DStv Premiership in the early stage of the season.
The Ahly coach, however, may have reached a bit when he claimed that Mngqithi could really just relax and do nothing, with the Sundowns structure he had put in place basically running itself.
“Kermit Erasmus, Peter Shalulile, I signed all of them, I made sure I left the team in a better place,” Mosimane said in conversation with the South African Football Journalists Association.
“The All Blacks say you must leave the jersey in a better place than you found it and no one at Sundowns can say they had to start again. You could see Peter would add value and Kermit … I was building the team to be stronger .. we bought hotshots. The movie is continuing, you can just enjoy the ride, Manqoba knows that, he can just have a coffee and smoke a cigar.”
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