Mamelodi Sundowns head coach Rulani Mokwena appeared to throw a dig back at Steve Komphela ahead of his side’s Nedbank Cup Last-16 showdown with Maritzburg United.
Sundowns take on the Motsepe Foundation Championship side on Sunday afternoon at the Lucas Moripe Stadium, which will be their last match before the FIFA International break.
But as he opened up to speak about the challenge Simo Dladla’s side may pose and how they will prepare, he aimed a slight dig at his former technical team member.
Komphela, who secured a win on his return to Golden Arrows, which ended their 11-match losing run stated ‘invisible’ success in football is more important than shining trophies.
“Selflessness has a reward, selfishness… in as much as people are so selfish and they do get rewarded, the reward to selfishness is not the same to selflessness,” Komphela said.
“The beauty of [uplifting and developing others] when you look at it and say this was a seed and then you looking at a forest.’
He went on to list all the players he developed who have enjoyed incredible careers and moved into the coaching space in the South African top-flight before taking a jab at Mokwena without mentioning names.
“I know of coaches we worked with, you will never get anywhere close to their briefcase, the laptop has four pins, and they hide the information like the pin code accesses a nuclear weapon, no man, open yourself up and suck as much as they can, because the blood they suck out of you is the blood that’s going to be transferred to other for growth and development.”
Presumably, having received the subliminal messages this week, Mokwena said with tongue in cheek that ‘all staff members have his passwords’ after his opening statement about the Team of Choice.
“We’re looking forward to it, should be a very interesting one, a good team with PSL experience, very good players, a good coach who has extensive experience in this competition and the PSL,” he stated ahead of the game.
“We have to come well prepared, I got an opportunity to clear our game and check our performance against SuperSport and also check their last game but a lot more games were loaded on my laptop that has five passwords, so I will go into that a bit later today.”
The two sides meet in Tshwane on Sunday at 18h00
