In the South African football landscape, no club spends as much money in the transfer market as Mamelodi Sundowns. At one stage, they earned the nickname “Mamelodi Sign-downs” among rival fans as quite a few of their acquisitions flopped spectacularly. Perhaps the most famous example was Jeremy Brockie, who was signed to finish off all the chances the team were spurning, but who instead scored just one league goal in his time at Chloorkop. Back then, Pitso Mosimane was all-powerful on the recruitment front, with the decorated coach saying, “I brought Kermit Erasmus at Sundowns. I signed all those players. All of them ... Shalulile, everybody. I personally recruited players, brought them to the team.” He had said before that, “When Manyisa comes‚ I am the one who says Manyisa must come. There is nobody somewhere saying he must come. I make the team list and substitutes‚ and I am in charge.” Things are a bit different now with Sporting Director Flemming Berg. So, Soccer Laduma takes a look at the recent signings to ascertain how many currently rank as a SUCCESS or a FLOP and how many have the JURY STILL OUT tag hanging above their heads.
The last few Pitso signed, and used
We know Pitso Mosimane left Mamelodi Sundowns quite abruptly after a big recruitment drive in his final transfer window. But, before that, let’s look at some of his additions that he both hand-picked and that he got the chance to use on the pitch. Of the 21 additions in the three seasons prior to his departure, a fair few were successful and many also flopped. We could probably say that Gaston Sirino, Rivaldo Coetzee, Andile Jali, Mosa Lebusa, Lebohang Maboe and Lyle Lakay were (or are) success stories, whilst some acquisitions were major flops! Aubrey Ngoma, George Lebese, Jeremy Brockie, Phakamani Mahlambi and Emiliano Tade were some of the more high-profile disappointments. In addition, who can forget Tokelo Rantie’s brief spell at Downs or Toni Silva’s explosive departure? And then we have Nyiko Mobbie, the one player whose arrival “Jingles” openly did not have any input in! We can say that things were very up and down and the ones who did succeed all happened to be very multi-functional players with physical gifts such as strength, intensity or pace.
