In his heyday, Lefa Tsutsulupa was a midfield general pulling strings in the heart of the Moroka Swallows midfield. These days, the dreadlocked maestro pulls strings from behind a desk for sportswear giant PUMA. Soccer Laduma caught up with the legend to talk all things post football...
On adjusting to life post football...
You know what? I think what was very challenging was the fact that, all of a sudden there is so much information filtering down to me, you know, because I feel as footballers we live in a bubble where everything is just football, football, football. It's either tactics, nutrition, performances and all that, but then once you stop, it means now you actually become part of the wider community. If you want to start a business, then you need to obviously now talk to people who are business-minded and then there's a whole lot of information that's trickling down to you and you're like, oh, Actually, I haven't been living. I've been in this football bubble. In a way, it's not a bad thing, but it's designed to keep you focused on one thing. If you're not training, your traveling, if you're not traveling, you're analyzing matches. If not, you're doing extra training. So yeah, the amount of information that one gets to see and hear and see and read is just a lot and I'm still trying to catch up.
On losing the sense of 'control' that comes with being a footballer...
Not necessarily. I think as a footballer, as much as you are being controlled in terms of what you do, you also pick up the important things that work for you. Even though you know the things that crap, but anyway, but then you do it. But then at a later stage, you develop a level of understanding to say if I want to achieve X and Y, how disciplined do I need to be? And I think you tend to develop a certain level of discipline. Sometimes you do things that you don't, even want to but you look at what the objective is. Post football, I didn't change anything I remained the same. I know what I need to do when I need to do it, and I think that has helped me in terms of adapting into the commercial world. But as much as we are in the commercial world, they still have their own rules, but you still need to do certain things extra hours here and there, but the funny thing is, we normally talk with other ex-professional players and we say that if you play football, you can go through anything life throws at you.
On when he started planning for retirement...
Firstly, I would say the biggest mistake that we do is plan for our careers, we actually do things too late right? In my case, I'll say I started planning my exit four years in advance that are before my retirement because I realized there was an opening at my team administration wise and then I started doing some short courses in administration. At least I had some time to actually read something. When the team got relegated, I needed to come up with Plan B – but at the moment, I won't call it that because it's what's working for me. But again, as much as you plan, it doesn't matter how much you plan, but the day you decide that you're not gonna play football anymore, but that's a whole different emotional feeling, because there are points where your body tells you, hey, you should be a training by now and then you are you are seated behind the desk, you know, and your body starts acting all funny. You need to get out, you need to walk, you're not supposed to be sitting. So, it's a little bit challenging both emotionally and physically, It's not easy.
Taking a road less traveled...
Because I used to fight other football legends who retired before me, I used to ask them why is everybody following the coaching route when there's so much that at footballers you can do? I actually made an example with them being coaches, I said to them, as long as our administrators are people that never played football, irrespective of how much the coaches get qualification and they modernize the football approach, nothing will ever change because the people who design policies never played football. So, then I realized that if we are to take football forward, we need ex-football professionals as administrators as well. So, when a coach is talking to an administrator, is talking to someone who understands fully. Case in point, there are some administrators that think football development is gathering kids on a Saturday and giving them shirts for one day. So, we still have that scenario even in 2023, but if you are to talk development with someone who plays football, then that's a different topic altogether. You know, so me taking a different route. I would say it was planned. I received a couple of jobs where people wanted me to do coaching. I turned them down. The year that I retired, I actually sent out emails to a couple of federations and people and coaches that I know, and I stated my intent, and everybody came back to me with a simple question, why don't you want to coach, and I said, if you don't have anything to offer, it's all good. But coaching is not my thing. But again, you can't blame other ex-players who are into coaching, because that's the easiest route to take and for a lot of them, it's all they know.
Landing a gig at PUMA...
It just it took one call. Like I said, I sent e-mails to a different people and then one day PUMA responded, and they let me know that there was a post that would be advertised in the near future and if I was interested, all good because at that point I was not doing anything. So, in a nutshell, what happened after I retired, I got a job as a CEO of a players management company, and I was in that job for like eight months and then we fell out with the owner of the company as we had differences in opinion. Yeah. And then I was out of employment for over a year until the PUMA Post came about. So yeah. And then I just took it, and then the rest is history.
