Pirates' Gabadinho Mhango has been as sleek as a Shelby

Wearing a white vest with black shorts sagging to the point of showing his red underpants, Gabadinho Mhango drips with rapper's swag.

And a hip-hopper's tongue to match.

"Started from the bottom we here, started from the bottom now my whole team f*****' here," he strings a line from Drake's song.

Naturally my curiosity about the choice of song is piqued as the red-hot Orlando Pirates marksman settles into the conversation at their Rand Stadium training base.

"The song means something to me. I used to motivate myself in life," explains the 27-year-old native of a tiny village in Chiweta, an underdeveloped part of northern Malawi.

"Also," he hastens to add, "the song holds meaning for [where] my team is. We didn't start well at the beginning of the season.

"But now I can see that everything is going well. Everybody is in the mood of the game. The team is doing well.

"We need to fight for ourselves, for the team. It's football. Anything can happen.

"Tomorrow one coach comes, the other coach will go. At the end of the day we just need to adapt to whatever coach comes. We need to adapt quicker ... I think now we're doing well."

Pirates were pretty much a pity party, a justified laughing stock not only languishing in the bottom half of the table but 17 points behind arch-rivals Kaizer Chiefs. Fortunes changed for the better when their coach Josep Zinnbauer joined in December.

The until-then submerged Sea Robbers' submarine emerged with seven wins and a draw in eight league matches. The form resurrected what looked like a stillborn title challenge.

Seeing Pirates galloping like a horse on steroids has excited The Ghost, who are salivating at the prospect of pulling a heist of Italian Job proportions on their neighbours.

The league run has seen the relatively unknown German coach chopping what was once a whopping lead to just six points.

Now that makes next Saturday's Soweto derby even more momentous.

Mhango has been the fuel behind the furnace of the turnaround. A brace in December. A hat-trick and a brace in January. Another brace in February.

The nine goals are part of a 14-strike blitzkrieg thus far, a goal away from his personal target for the season.

"At the beginning of the season I told myself that I will score 15 goals. Since I've been in SA nobody has scored 15 or above. I arrived here in 2013."

Reaching that target against Chiefs - he scored in the 3-2 first leg loss - and reducing the six points to three will in itself make it a special season for Mhango. It will also place him seven goals away from 22, the highest number of goals scored by a Pirates player, the late Lesley Manyathela after whom the PSL Golden Boot award is named.

In a previous interview while he was plying his trade with Bidvest Wits, Mhango told me: "I must improve in putting the ball in the net in every training session. That will transform to match day."

Now his final product is so polished, he is purring like Eleanor, the sleek 1967 Ford Shelby in the movie Gone in 60 Seconds. That season the predatory Malawian proved to be the pivotal brains behind the brilliant start Wits had to the 2016-17 campaign. They went on to win it. This season, he is the focal point behind a late charge for the championship.

He gave Zinnbauer a dream debut, his brace blessing the German with a win in a 3-1 bollocking of Black Leopards.

Is he equally eager to hand Zinnbauer his first Soweto derby win or even a league trophy? "At some point we didn't believe we were competing in the league but look at us now. This is not a one-man show. We are all working hard. We have a coach who believes in us and we believe in him.

"We are still going far. We are still going higher," said Mhango, the man of the moment. Roll on February 29.

bbk@sundaytimes.co.za