Al Hilal head coach Florent Ibenge conceded Pitso Mosimane played a pivotal role in convincing him to continue coaching when he was ready to call it a day.
Ibenge is widely considered as one of the finest tacticians in African football over the past two decades, but his talents were nearly lost to the game altogether.
Having started his coaching career in the lower leagues in France, where he ended his professional career, he had three years with ES Wasquehal and SC Douai before he ventured to China with Shanghai Shenhua for a brief period in 2012.
Two years later, he was appointed in a dual role with AS Vita and the DR Congo national team and he admitted that it was not coaching two teams, but three, as he had the responsibility to lead their CHAN squad – a tournament he won back in 2016.
“It kind of became political [my mental issues] because we also had a conflict with Angola, we played against them, Rwanda and Congo Brazzaville, facing these countries had a toll on me, and I needed a break,” he told iDiski Times about his reasons for wanting out.
“Mentally it took a lot because all three teams come with so much pressure to produce results. It demands results.”
Competing for CHAN, qualifying his country for AFCON on multiple occasions, finishing second in the CAF Champions League and CAF Confederation Cup, as well as three league titles, 2014 to 2021 was a rather grueling period for Ibenge and within that, he admitted one conversation with Mosimane helped him to keep going.
“Pitso, when he knew that I wanted to stop, he told me, ‘you can’t stop now, you can’t stop now – we don’t have many African coaches, so for the moment you are on the top, you are a leader,” he explained.
“You can’t stop and I’m telling you, you don’t need to stop’. So we spoke and it was a booster [for my confidence]. So it just made me realise, I wasn’t coaching for myself, I was doing this for coaches all over Africa, all the coaches that aren’t considered for jobs and I thought I’d hate to leave now as one of these leaders coaching in Africa.”
Ibenge went on to win the CAF Confederation Cup, and the Moroccan Throne Cup with RS Berkane after his exit within controversial circumstances at AS Vita – and he’s since moved to Al Hilal, where he has accepted a three-year project to win the CAF Champions League.
Together with Mosimane, and Morocco head coach Walid Regragui, they have been the pillars of African coaching in the modern era – and they have been inseparable figures since studying for their CAF Pro Licences together in the North African state.
“Yes, we are really close, but not just us, we are close with some European coaches too. But we are really close because we feel the same pain. We work so hard and nobody takes us as seriously as we should be taken,” the 61-year-old added.
“So we have the same aims, the same problems; recognition. We are still struggling but what we realised, by working together, that united we stand and divided, we fall. But before us, there was Stephan Keshi and Hassan Shehata, now it’s us to give the batons to the younger ones coming into the game… but we still left frustrated because we’re going through the same kind of ill-treatment.
“As you see coaches coming from outside, coming to coach here, in a team like South Africa, you can see the coach of South Africa [Hugo Broos], he will leave here and go to another country in Africa.
“But for us, when you are Congolese, you have to just coach in Congo, if you are Moroccan, you only coach in Morocco, so we need to change this, everything has to change. We have to notice that there’s a racial kind of treatment, when you are black you are treated differently, but we can say that we are on the right path to improving this.”
