When Orlando Pirates announced the departure of coach Jose Riveiro, some of the most hardened Bucs supporters were reduced to tears.
You see, Riveiro has brought back the good old glory days with gay abandon – and ooh yeah, ooh yeah football die-hard supporters cry too – that’s how powerful football is for you, it can leave grown-arse men sobbing like little girls.
At the time, the team was on a high and the Sea Robbers were capturing and hijacking every ship in the Betway Premiership and in the CAF Champions League. The news of the Spaniard’s not extending his contract beyond three seasons hit them like a haymaker from a prime Mike Tyson.
The sad part is that the explanation from the club was as vague and as empty as the Kaizer Chiefs trophy cabinet in the last decade. And to those Buccaneers long in the tooth, it must have been evoked a sense of déjà vu. They felt the same pain when Ruud Krol left the club under mysterious ways after he won the treble in the last season of his three-year deal.
Even today, the staunchest of Pirates supporters still cannot put their fingers as to why Krol, and his superstitious peach linen shirt, left Pirates after so much success.
After his departure, Krol wandered about on the African continent coaching mediocre clubs such as Al Ahli (Libya) and in Tunisia with Esperance, CS Sfaxien, Club Africain and the national team before he disappeared into oblivion.
If you have been following Riveiro’s three-year tenure, you would have noticed that the Spaniard still has unfinished business in Mzansi. He has fallen in love with the The Ghost (the supporters) and the mysterious way the country operates.
He may have always appeared expressionless he was still captivated and enthralled by our diski and how the Soweto derby was so unique and how rival fans sit together and create an unbelievable atmosphere at the matches.
In the Soweto derby, both sets of fans often travel together, sit alongside each and still create an electrifying atmosphere. This does not happen anywhere else in the world and the departing Spaniard is fascinated and still in awe of it all.
What he said after one of his many victories over Chiefs last week tells a story of a man whose heart is still very much with the Buccaneers.
“It (Soweto derby) is something unique, something that wherever I go, it is going to be difficult to experience something like it. It is something that I can never explain. It’s a proper football party, it is unique having the fans watching the game sitting together, celebrating without any problems,” Riveiro said after the Bucs victory.
“These two clubs are the proper history of SA football, and this is something that you need to protect forever. I always try to explain to people on the other side of the world what it means to be part of the Soweto derby, they do not understand it and hopefully they can be attracted by this kind of show to come and experience [it] for themselves.”
The biggest question the Bucs supporters are still asking themselves is why all these successful and popular coaches are vamoosing in the middle of highly triumphant spells, leaving the team to start from scratch again.
The fans, who are now used to winning, might be in for a change of fortune.
