EDITORIAL | Have Sundowns revealed a chink in their armour with Mngqithi demotion?

Mamelodi Sundowns’ domination of SA domestic football for the past decade has been so complete that any sign of a chink in the armour of the invincible Yellow Knight will be taken with some relief by their rivals.

The demotion of 51-year-old Manqoba Mngqithi in the co-coaching structure at Downs — where he works on the bench with his fellow schemers, the young and ambitious 35-year-old Rulani Mokwena and sage 55-year-old Steve Komphela — may just turn out to be such a chink. At least that’s what Orlando Pirates, SuperSport United, Cape Town City and especially Kaizer Chiefs — the club that has suffered most with a dreadful barren spell during Downs’ indomitable reign — will be hoping.

It’s spoken of as a fact these days that Downs have dominated domestic football for 10 years. It’s worth putting up the trophies in the cabinet as proof of that statement.

Since Pitso Mosimane turned around a team in danger of fighting relegation under Johan Neeskens to end a six-year trophy drought with the 2013-14 Premiership title, six more championships have followed — seven in in nine seasons and the last five in succession.

Some thought the departure in September 2020 of Pitso Mosimane, who won 11 trophies in eight years, would prompt a collapse in a similar vein as Manchester United’s slide after Alex Ferguson’s retirement.

During that period the Brazilians became the second SA team, after Orlando Pirates in 1995, to win the Caf Champions League in 2016. They added three Nedbank Cups, two Telkom Knockouts and one MTN8, plus a Caf Super Cup as a sweetener.

Some thought the departure in September 2020 of Pitso Mosimane, who won 11 trophies in eight years, would prompt a collapse in a similar vein as Manchester United’s slide after Alex Ferguson’s retirement. In medieval times, knights’ impregnable castles sometimes took decades to breach.

The manner in which co-coaches Mngqithi and Mokwena, and “senior coach” Steve Komphela, worked as a trio to add another league gong in 2020-21, and a domestic treble in 2021-22, with football as dazzling as Mosimane’s had been, showed the foundations of the fortress remained strong.

Sundowns changing the dynamic on Monday — making Mokwena, the junior of the three, head coach, Komphela second in command and Mngqithi effectively third — has the potential to destabilise the three-way coaching equilibrium. It’s a new system that looks ripe for discord.

The castle Mosimane built, and his successors maintained, draws its strength not just from the head coaches but also a superb squad, an army of boffins, scouts, nutritionists, fitness gurus, analysts in the technical staff and an ever-improving facility at Chloorkop. It would be almost impossible for star-studded Downs to just start losing.

But their opposition, and neutrals, will watch with great interest to see how the revamped coaching structure pans out and if it perhaps heralds an end to the one-horse race the PSL has become. Then again in modern football money talks — Downs might also just keep getting stronger.