Moroka Swallows are expected to be strong and be competitive this season, but coach Steve Komphela says the results cannot be instantaneous, adding that cooking pap also takes time.
Komphela was appointed by the Dube Birds from Mamelodi Sundowns and Swallows’ management have backed him in the market in buying experienced players.
The former Kaizer Chiefs coach said before you can excel, there are many phases one has to undergo before the team can perform to the desired standards.
Komphela went as far as going back to his interview with Chiefs during 2015 and 2018, where he said South Africans are impatient people and sadly and they want instant results, not knowing they are stages to pass before that happens.
At Swallows and looking at the investment made, Komphela is in the same territory – to perform – after drawing and losing in the first two league matches of the season.
“Not at all,” Komphela replied when asked if he is under pressure following these two matches.
“I’ll take you back to 2015 when I said we are a nation of instant gratification. There is an interview I did at Chiefs [after facing Maritzburg in 2014] and it went viral, where I was speaking about the Bamboo tree.
“I want to now bring it together. The analogy I brought in terms of how do you reach levels of faith, that you have to have faith, but before that it’s a belief and all that but it starts first with trust.
“You can never be trusted, if you have never been tested, so Swallows is going through that test to be trusted.
“When you cook pap – I’m making an example – that water is cold. When you put it on the stove, you have to wait for the water to boil. By the time you bring the miele meal and the salt, the ingredients and you wait for [water to boil]. Even as soon as you pour water, you have a meal-meal and you put salt, if you know how to cook a pap.
“If you cook pap, then you will have to wait for that to simmer and it depends, if you want to make uPhuthu, Mphokoqo, whatever you call it.
“But it takes time. That analogy [I have adopted]. Why do I love football? It is because football is a microscopic reflection of society and analogies in football are reflections of how society has to behave and we shy away from that.
“How you do one thing is obviously how you do everything else. The preparation of pap or everything, there are stages [to success].”
Komphela’s patience and that of his team will be tested to the extreme level when they face Sundowns in the MTN8 quarter-final at Lucas Moripe Stadium on Saturday (15:00).
