ALLY MEANS BUSINESS

My dearest readers ... They call him Ally, the Great. For sometime, I have wondered why this was the case when he had only won the season opener, the EswatiniTelecom Charity Cup – itself a one-day soccer extravaganza. 

Flamboyant, successful Pretoria-based businessman is one of the many effusive attributes pre-fixed to his name and boy, his grandiosity seem to know no bounds as he dominated newspaper headlines with one discernable quote after the other.

The hacks found in him a mine-field of quotable quotes and he seemed to be ready – all the time. The opportunity to him seemed just too good to miss. He thrives on publicity and this is what gives him his cachet. 

His kind gesture, completely at odds with the FIFA’s doctrine of Fair-Play, ethical competition and constitution, of assisting in paying salaries and finding a director for the orphaned and vulnerable child that is Manzini Wanderers obviously rubbed many the wrong way. 

I was one of those who reacted like an acid and felt, he had overstepped his mark. The issue has obviously died a natural death. It is actually gone with the all the debris of the gutlessness of the Peter Magagula out-of-touch leadership.

For once, Ally and his football business dealings, are in the spotlight for the right reasons. 

He means business in every sense of the word. The way he has gone about signing quality players since the COVID-19 pandemic turned our world upside down has been a stuff of legends. 

I am not surprised this has rubbed the red and white part of the capital city, in particular, the wrong way. An unflattering joke that Ally Kgomongwe is so obsessed with everything about Swallows he might be tempted to even sign the ‘Birds’ number one fan, Sithawula Tsela, who is trending. 

Good

You can laugh here too, you son of a gun. But while this should be seen as just harmless banter between two arch rivals fans, there is no doubt Kgomongwe’s latest football business has set the cat among the pigeons. This is good for the game in the country. It is precisely what our football needs right now. 

Highlanders are the country’s most successful club with 12 league trophies under their ‘horns’, so to speak. When they conduct such good football business, one cannot ignore it. Infact, it has to be applauded. 

With the quality signings, Highlanders look like, to borrow the wise words of South Africa’s City Press Editor in Chief Mondli Makhanya’s assertion about Orlando Pirates’ squad composition, Usain Bolt running in an old-age home athletic challenge.

For me, it is not just Kgomongwe signing all quality players and trainer in Siyabonga Bhembe, all former Swallows personnel, but it is the signing of suspended striker Sabelo ‘Sikhali’ Ndzinisa that ticked all the right boxes. Kgomongwe, here, showed his unmatched compassion to a player, whose career looked dead and buried. 

He showed a great spirit of ubuntu in helping out a player who had just seen his life, in totality, hit a brick wall. 

Ndzinisa may remain suspended and the decision to sign a suspended player may look imprudent especially if Highlanders do not succeed in overturning the two-year suspension sentence, but Kgomongwe’s willingness to take the matter up while putting food on the table for the player and his family is commendable to say the least. 

After his transfer debacle which rendered Mbombela United non-existent, nobody was willing to touch ‘Sikhali’ even with the proverbial beanpole. Not even the Eswatini Football Association (EFA) inspite of the fact that he was a national team player.  

That is why Kgomongwe’s compassionate gesture must be commended because he has taken all the risk in saving the football career of a player who knows nothing else, but football as a source of income. 

God knows what would have happened to Ndzinisa had Kgomongwe not taken such a huge risk. God bless Ally Kgomongwe.

Bigger

On a bigger perspective, Highlanders signing the Sikhondze brothers, Papi and Pupu, plus trainer Siyabonga Bhembe, will obviously add excitement to the old Mbabane derby which over the years had started to lose its sting as the results were as predictable as night following day.

Not to be outdone, Swallows, on the other hand, also snatched Njabulo ‘D4D’ Ndlovu, and brought on board Ghanaian coach, Christopher Ennin, who did a laudable job at Denver Sundowns where he instilled a culture of tiki-taka football. 

Ennin needs no reminder of the tough task that lies ahead at a club where winning trophies has become a culture and a way of life. No doubt, with the manner Kgomongwe has conducted his football business, we are headed for an exciting 2020/2021 season. 

Now, Ally the Great has a meaning to it. Even this grandson of Mlonyeni, the game’s most fastidious arm-chair critic, doff off his poor boy’s cap in salute. 

Good going ‘Chief’...Gwaza Nkunzi!

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