Former Orlando Pirates and Cape Town City midfielder Mpho Makola has revealed why he refused to sign a proposed two-year contract at Polokwane City, who are back in the DStv Premiership.
Makola joined Rise and Shine in the Motsepe Foundation Championship last season, with eight matches left to go after he was released by the Citizens and played a crucial role for them to gain automatic promotion.
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The 37-year-old claims he was promised a two-year contract by Polokwane chairman Johnny Mogaladi should they gain promotion and although the two-year offer was allegedly tabled to him recently, he has further alleged that the contract had no figures on it and that he rejected the supposed offer.
"Prior to me signing a short-term contract, I had discussions with the chairman that should I help the team get promotion, I have a two-year contract waiting for me," Makola said on Metro FM Sports.
"Even during pre-season, I was called to office that 'the chairman has offered you a two-year contract as he promised' but it did not have figures and I didn't want to sign a blank page," he said.
'Bibo', as the experienced midfielder is fondly known, went on to discuss how this was an unusual experience for him.
"Nothing like that (salary) and I said I'm not gonna sign anything. No figures, it was the first time I saw something like that. After I said I'm not gonna sign I got a message, they told me that the chairman said 'he'll call you, meet up with you', until this day that never happened," he said.
"The next time I spoke to them was when they gave us (including Joseph Mhlongo) our papers to say, 'Thank you so much for helping the team, we really appreciate your work but from here we're not moving forward with you guys'.
Read – Pio Nogueira: 'Something Is Wrong'"I'm not bitter, I'm moving forward from this but I'm just disappointed he himself did not come and speak to us like we spoke before I signed a short-term contract," he added.
Makola also revealed that he does not have an agent and represents himself.
Since then, Polokwane Chief Operations Officer Tincy Tema has denied the claims made by Makola.
Tema says they had parted ways with the former Pirates player because he was not in the plans of the technical team for the upcoming season.
"First thing what Mpho said, with due respect, I'll say he lied because remember Mpho (Makola) is a big name player. How can you give a player like Mpho an empty contract? If ever we did that it means we didn't respect him. But I can tell you we've always considered him a senior player," Tema said on Metro FM Sports.
"We had an end of year report which was prepared by the technical team, presented to the management. In the report they were saying Mpho Makola won't be part of the team going forward, he was not in their plans. It's a practice all over whenever the player is not in the coach's plans they normally get released, so that's exactly what we did with Mpho," he added.
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