If, like so many who can only imagine it do, you were to plot out a dream career as footballer, something akin to what Siyabonga Nomvethe experienced over a glittering 23-year sojourn might be an ideal you could base it on.
There are plenty of career highlights for the player lovingly known as “Bhele”. Starting in school for African Wanderers then Kaizer Chiefs, playing for the South Africa Under-23 side that shocked Brazil at the 2000 Olympics, turning out against superstars like Alessandro Del Piero and the Brazilian Ronaldo in Serie A, winning league titles in Scandinavia and returning to win a PSL Footballer of the Year award for Moroka Swallows.
There was much to savour, including, among it all, the beauty provided by the skilful, electrifying, thrilling striker or winger on the field in a career that saw him end at top-flight level at AmaZulu at 41.
Spotted by Wanderers playing in a KFC under-18 tournament in the late 1990s Nomvethe cut his teeth in amateur football playing for Mzuvele Secondary School in KwaMashu, just north of Durban, joining amateur teams like James Cosmos, a team and academy owned and coached by football enthusiast James Dlamini. Strong schools football in talent-rich KwaZulu-Natal is often the provider of future stars.
“He [Dlamini] loved football, he loved to build something that would help all the young players. He started to see my talent growing stronger and stronger,” Nomvethe, 47, said at a two-day youth tournament backed by Trellidor, for whom he is a brand ambassador, at the Nike Football Training Centre in Klipspruit, Soweto on Sunday.
“My career started at Mzuvele High, because I started to perform very well, push everything as I could and teams started noticing me, were scared of me because I was scoring goals. I even joined African Wanderers while I was still at the school — they were in the first division and I was doing standard 8 [today’s grade 10], and when they won promotion I was still in standard 9.”
Nomvethe’s Wanderers, despite scant resources, were an exciting combination, especially in attack, where the striker was partnered by another Bafana legend, Sibusiso Zuma, and Phumlani Mkhize, with the skilful Tholomuzi Blose in midfield. Despite the efforts of now Orlando Pirates assistant coach Mandla Ncikazi in defence, the side coached by Henry “Black Cat” Cele (who played King Shaka kaSenzangakhona in the 1980s TV series Shaka Zulu) bled goals and were relegated within a season at the end of 1997-98.
“When they were relegated Kaizer Chiefs came for me. I was still in high school at Chiefs too.” Amakhosi hired a tutor for Nomvethe to complete the last six months of his matric in Johannesburg and “I went back to Mzuvele to write my exams”.
When Nomvethe saw Mkhize and Zuma join an already strong Pirates front-line, he backed his pace to give him a better chance competing against less mobile Pollen Ndlanya and Marc Batchelor at Paul Dolezar’s Chiefs. He was a hit at Amakhosi, scoring more than 40 goals in less than 80 games, at the same time starring alongside Benni McCarthy, Delron Buckley, Jabu Mahlangu and Quinton Fortune in Shakes Mashaba’s famous under-23 team that shocked Brazil 3-1 at the Sydney Olympics.
Earlier that year he scored two goals playing a support role to tournament top scorer Shaun Bartlett (five) as Trott Moloto’s Bafana, missing McCarthy due to a premature retirement, placed fourth in the Africa Cup of Nations in Ghana and Nigeria. With such exploits, it was no surprise when Nomvethe’s agent Mike Makaab told him Udinese had come calling.
Going to Serie A — then still probably in the top two leagues in the world — at 23, was not going to be easy. Nomvethe played 23 games in two-and-a-half years. Under the circumstances, it was a healthy return. He can never have regrets about testing himself against some of the world’s best.
“If the opportunity comes to go to a big league you have to grab it. It was the best league in the world and I was playing against the big names — Del Piero, [Filippo] Inzaghi, [Fabio] Cannavaro, the Brazilian Ronaldo. Growing up you say one day you will play with big names like that.
“But it’s not a simple league. Even now, it’s a difficult league — one of the best in the world. There is Spain, England [and Italy and Germany] — those are the big leagues.”
After loans to Salernitana, then helping Empoli gain promotion from Serie B, Nomvethe sought better game time opportunities in Scandinavia with a further loan to Djurgården, playing a small part in their 2005 Allsvenskan title. He said the Swedish club wanted to sign him outright as his Udinese contract ended at the end of 2005, but that would have put the striker in a huge tax bracket. A loophole to that was a six-month stint in South Africa until the end of the 2005-06 season, then return to Europe. Nomvethe was hoping it would be Chiefs, but they weren’t amenable to a short-term move. Pirates were.
But it was Danish club Aalborg BK that stepped in for his return to Europe, and Nomvethe would spend three happy seasons there. Everyone knows his Wanderers teammate Zuma was a huge hit in Denmark with FC Copenhagen, including two league titles and earning the nickname “Zuma the Puma” as a cult figure to adoring fans from 2000 to 2005. Not as many recall Nomvethe arrived in the country soon after that and also won a Super Liga title, in 2007-08.
The South Africans who pioneered paths into Europe in the 1990s and 2000s had multiple languages to learn as they transferred across the continent, cultures to adapt to, plus the cold weather and strange-to-the palate food. It was not always easy. Much was good. For the more inquisitive of mind the experience of living in old, culture-steeped European cities like Leeds, Copenhagen, St Gallen, Udine, Rome, Porto and Aalborg must have been some adventure. Many left township lads and came back men of the world.
There was always something different about Nomvethe as a footballer. Less attracted to nightclubs, fast cars and making the tabloids for the wrong reasons, he preserved his body to have an extraordinarily long career. At his European clubs, he would take holidays exploring the old continent’s cities.
“It’s not easy, sometimes the language is so difficult and the food too — in Italy you eat pasta, there is no chicken curry or mutton curry. In Scandinavia they speak Danish and they are more [versed in] English, so it was easier.
We were expecting to be the champions, but sometimes football can disappoint you. There was nothing we could do because we were competing with another big team, but we tried our best.
— Siyabonga Nomvethe
“But what an experience. Every time I wanted to travel I would go to Florence, Valencia, Salerno was a nice place. If I wanted to go to Germany or Holland I would just drive. It was so easy just to experience Europe.
“When I had holidays or was not doing anything I was just taking some small vacations just to learn the places, because I had a car, I had navigation, you just put the destination and it will take you there.
“Even Denmark was so nice. If I wanted to go to Copenhagen, it was six hours’ drive. Or with less time I would take a plane — you paid about 25 Danish Krone, so cheap.”
There was more. After Europe, returning to play for Moroka Swallows at 31 in 2009, Nomvethe had no thoughts of winding things down. As part of Gordon Igesund’s Birds of 2011-12 who ended second in the league, pipped by Pirates in a dramatic final day, 34-year-old Nomvethe won PSL Footballer of the Year, Premiership Player and Player’s Player of the Year and the Lesley Manyathela Golden Boot with 20 goals.
“We were expecting to be the champions, but sometimes football can disappoint you. There was nothing we could do because we were competing with another big team, but we tried our best.”
After ending at AmaZulu in 2019, Nomvethe still played a further season for Uthongathi in the first division, finally bowing out at 43. He made his entry into coaching as assistant coach for McCarthy’s AmaZulu that ended runners-up to Mamelodi Sundowns in 2020-21. Now his foundation is running the Siyabonga Nomvethe Schools Cup, a huge league-system competition that has been operating in KwaZulu-Natal for three years, which the former player wants to take national soon.
He may have finally hung up his boots, but in football there is plenty more to come from Bhele.
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