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Nostalgia is said to impart that brief but warm feeling – a feeling not dissimilar to when you wet your pants standing in the rain on a bitterly cold day.
But I’ll return to this feeling later in the column.
South African soccer followers are likely to speak in glowing terms about the season that is coming to a close – with special reference to league champions Kaizer Chiefs.
But an honest assessment of the season will reveal that Amakhosi rarely played exciting football.
In most cases, it was simply effective and produced the desired results, thereby leading to the Phefeni Glamour Boys – or is it now Naturena? – breaking all sorts of records. The effective football they played secured the MTN8 Cup as well.
Congratulations to Chiefs.
Although their runaway train may have robbed soccer followers of the excitement of a league title race going down to the wire, the season did deliver a roller coaster of emotion so often associated with the beautiful game.
There were times when Chiefs looked like they were going to falter, especially after losing their first match against SuperSport United.
This brought the fears of their faithful followers to the fore, as they could only but recall the results of last season when they were pipped at the post by Mamelodi Sundowns after leading by 13 points at one stage.
It also gave the chasing pack of Sundowns, Orlando Pirates and Bidvest Wits a glimmer of hope that they might still have a fighting chance at the title.
And where would football be without the banter that is part and parcel of the sport?
There was even a time when Chiefs supporters posted what was dubbed the World Log on social media.
That listing showed the gap that Chiefs, Chelsea, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Juventus had created between themselves and their pursuers in their respective leagues.
Up until a month ago, some Pirates supporters even insisted that Chiefs were holding the umbrella – well-used South African football jargon that means Chiefs were just holding the position until the rightful team was ready to take its place at the top.
On the day Chiefs finally clinched the title, one fan changed his WhatsApp status to: Chiefs have been holding the umbrella for Amakhosi.
Last week, some clever person took to social media to post an image of a book cover with the Pirates skull and crossbones logo and the title Orlando Pirates’ Long Walk to 50 Points.
Where would football be without the followers who add to the excitement we witness on the field of play?
But with the league race now done, and while ’Downs, Pirates and Wits continue to fight for second position, the real dogfight is at the bottom of the league.
Among those fighting for dear life to stay in the elite league are two teams with long-standing traditions, AmaZulu and Moroka Swallows.
Usuthu had been sitting at the bottom of the table since the beginning of the season, but the arrival of Steve Barker saw them start to collect the vital points that last week moved them above The Dube Birds.
Swallows replied by winning against Maritzburg United on Friday to go three points above their rivals before AmaZulu’s match against SuperSport United yesterday.
It will be a sad day indeed if AmaZulu or Swallows – among the oldest clubs in South African football – go down.
However, as mentioned at the start of this column, nostalgia can be a tricky thing.
If such a mishap were to happen, the club bosses, Leon Prins of Swallows and Patrick Sokhela of AmaZulu, should carry the can.
Any of the two who manages to get such admirable institutions relegated would qualify to make it into Jamie Oliver (not the chef) and Tony Goodwin’s book How They Blew It: The CEOs and Entrepreneurs Behind Some of the World’s Most Catastrophic Business Failures.
The book chronicles how some entrepreneurs built up multibillion-dollar businesses only to bring them down to their knees.
While Prins and Sokhela did not build the two clubs, they have managed to damage their brands and lay them low in dramatic fashion.
smseleku@citypress.co.za
Follow me on Twitter @SBu_Mseleku
