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Cape Town - "I have a dream!" No it is not Martin Luther King Jr's 56-year-old acclamation this time about ending racism in the United States.
Instead it was cherubic soccer coach Gordon Igesund revealing "a dream" to build a soccer team from players as young as five at the academy he has opened in Cape Town, go on to purchase a PSL National First Division franchise, gain promotion to the Absa Premiership and eventually raise soccer in the country to a new exciting level.
A dream it might only be at this stage, but the 63-year-old Igesund who was nicknamed "The Golden Boy" is quite adept at turning dreams into reality, holding the record of guiding no fewer than four different clubs, Manning Rangers, Santos, Orlando Pirates and Mamelodi Sundowns, to the Absa Premiership title during a notable coaching career in the top-flight of South African soccer.
"I have as many as 200 youngsters at my Rondebosch coaching venue in Cape Town on a single day, with 11 assistants helping me in a fast-growing programme,” said the Durban-born Igesund, who has also coached Bafana Bafana and enjoyed a successful playing career in Europe and this country with Highlands Park.
"Already," he added, "we have teams at junior level performing with great success and, in numerous instances, going unbeaten and topping their log tables."
As to returning to assume a position of coaching a club in the Absa Premiership right now, what with the merry-go-round of hiring and firing of coaches reaching epidemic proportions, Igesund said it would require "something exceptional" for him to even consider offers and divert his attention from his academy initiative.
"The Rondebosch enterprise is running so smoothly, with the staff to a man fitting into the programme like parts of a jigsaw puzzle," said "The Golden Boy", "that I could theoretically spread my wings a little. But I'm not looking further than my dream right now."
