Obituary: Ted Dumitru, quiet coach who brought out the best in local talent

Ted Dumitru, who died aged 76 after collapsing at Eastgate shopping centre in Johannesburg on Thursday, was a football coach with a long and illustrious career.

On Wednesday, he had a headache and felt a bit dizzy. He took a nap and woke up feeling better on Thursday. As he was walking towards Woolworths at the mall, he collapsed. Paramedics arrived and tried to resuscitate him, to no avail; closing a colourful, successful chapter of a coaching life.

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Brought to South Africa by the owner of Kaizer Chiefs, Kaizer Motaung, in 1985, Dumitru went on to become the most successful coach in South African professional football. The veteran master-tactician had an illustrious career during which he amassed 18 trophies with Chiefs and Mamelodi Sundowns, including two back-to-back league championships with each side.

He also had a stint with Orlando Pirates and rather forgettable spells at Manning Rangers and the national side Bafana Bafana in 2006.

Born in Bucharest, Romania, he cut his teeth in coaching at 25, his career starting at FC Universitatea Craiova in his native land, from 1964 to ’66.

A rolling stone set on improving his knowledge of the game, Dumitru was a nomad. His sojourns took him through to Turkey and after a decade in the North American Soccer League, he set his sights on an African adventure in 1980.

He pitched his tent in Zambia, whose Chipolopolo national team he helped to qualify for the 1982 African Nations Cup edition in Libya.

He won a great salutation from the father of Zambian freedom, the then president Kenneth Kaunda, who said of Dumitru: “He is more than a coach. He is a son of Africa. He is a humanist who puts sports well-being ahead of his profession.”

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But he could not travel to Libya because as a US passport-holder he found little favour with the anti-American regime of Muammar Gaddafi.

A proponent of carpet football, Dumitru believed in using skill tounlock defences, as opposed to skiet en donder.

Where others saw trickery as a useless mockery of the game, Dumitru saw genius.

He nurtured it and encouraged it as an essential and useful tool to win matches. Hence players such as Doctor Khumalo and Scara Ngobese at Chiefs, and Alex Bapela and Charles Motlohi at Mamelodi Sundowns — to name but four midfield geniuses — thrived under Dumitru’s tutelage. He led Sundowns to the final of the Confederation of African Football Champions League in 2001, losing the two-legged encounter 4-1 to Al Ahly of Egypt.

A non-smoker, “he would seldom have a glass of wine to celebrate”, recalls Natasha Tsichlas, who was MD of Sundowns during Dumitru’s magical years at the club.

“Ted was the most cool coach I’ve ever met in my life. He was calm, never shouted or screamed at the players,” said Tsichlas.

“There were times when I thought during a match, ‘We are doing badly, why is he just standing there, rubbing his chin and doing nothing?’ The next thing he makes a substitution or two and it changes the whole game in our favour. And in style too.

“He never did things quickly, he wanted to be sure. That was his great quality,” she said.

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“Sometimes he was a lonely person. All the years he was in Sundowns we were close. My mother would cook for him. He would seldom have a glass of wine. Never smoked. Always on the computer doing football-related things.”

Chiefs chairman Motaung first learnt of Dumitru while they both played in the North American Soccer League. But he convinced him to coach Chiefs when they met in Swaziland.

“Unlike some of the coaches, Ted was a very humble person and never complained about anything. He just negotiated his deal, was a very honest person and never tried to do something outside the agreements that he had,” said Motaung.

“He was very forthright. He called a spade a spade and because of that, he must have ruffled a few feathers and became unpopular in certain quarters.”

Dumitru, added Motaung, had a special way of dealing with players.

“A lot of good, talented players mostly, you’d find either on the lazy side or don’t come very good with discipline and so forth.

“Those are the areas that Ted dealt with. He was very shrewd in terms of how he managed players with those kind of problems. He didn’t always wield the big stick, he tried to work with the mind of the player.”

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For all his greatness, Dumitru was also prone to moments of apparent irrationality.

His reluctance to accept criticism was legendary, as when he quit Manning Rangers in 2000. The poor spell that resulted in his dismissal was not so much his fault as it was the work of a “third force” Dumitru never explained.

One of Bafana’s lowest moments came with Dumitru in charge. Bizarrely, even disturbingly, Dumitru insisted that his team, which suffered first-round elimination with no goals, no wins, no points and bottom of the group, was among the best in the tournament.

A student of the game, he loved sharing his knowledge. On the day of his death he was due to address 150 delegates at a youth coaching seminar organised by the South African Football Coaches Association at Johannesburg Stadium.

He also wrote a booklet, Maximal Training , which advocated an approach to football based on the attributes of African players.

He is survived by a daughter who lives in the US.

“His partner told me Ted asked to be cremated. He went the way he lived, very quietly,” said Tsichlas.

Funeral details had yet to be announced at the time of writing

1939-2016