Having Steve Komphela back in the dugout as a head coach will certainly liven up the DStv Premiership season with beaming personality and ‘quotable quotes’, but for the 56-year-old this is a major chance to re-emerge from the shadows at a sleeping giant of a club in Moroka Swallows.
Komphela had spent the last three years in the technical team at all-conquering Mamelodi Sundowns, where winning was easy as he supported, initially co-coaches Manqoba Mngqithi and Rulani Mokwena, and then just the latter when Mokwena became the sole head coach last season.
The former Bafana Bafana captain could have stayed on in that role and continued to bank his sizeable monthly salary, so it is kudos to him that he has taken on what will be a challenging, but potentially rewarding job at Swallows.
It is his first foray back into a head coach role since he left Lamontville Golden Arrows for Sundowns in 2020, and his second job at an iconic Soweto club having spent almost three years without success at Kaizer Chiefs.
He will celebrate 20 years as a coach in the PSL this season, following his debut with Manning Rangers in 2003/04, though in between there was some time spent with the junior, and briefly senior, national teams.
He looks a good fit for Swallows, a club who have underachieved in recent years but now look to be on the up, having also this week announced a new sponsor.
Komphela is an excellent man-manager, but more than that he is also a keen student of the game and has managed to get less fancied clubs in the past to overachieve with his tactical acumen.
What is lacking from his CV, and a fact he will be desperate to change this season, is a piece of silverware, but 2023/24 brings four chances – or perhaps more realistically three in the cup competitions – to change that.
The signing of Andile Jali, a player who looks up to Komphela as a father figure, is a big boost with his experience and skill, and if there is any coach in the south African topflight who can get the best out of him then it is the Swallows mentor.
Komphela will be well aware of the deficiencies in The Birds’ squad, but will also have noted how they ended last season strong to earn an MTN8 quarterfinal place, ironically against his former side Sundowns.
He has taken charge of 439 games in South African football as a head coach, winning 159 of those (36 per cent) to go with 136 draws (31 per cent) and 144 losses (33 per cent).
It has been a mixed bag, there can be no denying that, but a new team, a new environment and a stable management could well bring out the best in him.
Komphela started his topflight coaching career at Rangers in 2003/04 but then left after six games to be replaced by the late Ian Palmer and eventually Roy Barreto.
That was in October of 2003, but by April 2004 he was back and led the team to three wins in their final four games to avoid relegation. They also reached the final of the Absa Cup but lost 3-1 to Gavin Hunt’s Moroka Swallows. Komphela left Rangers again at the end of the season and took up the head coach role with the national Under-23 side.
In between those two spells he had a 19-game stint at Dynamos but managed only two wins in that time (to go with 11 draws) and was axed, returning to Durban.
He had come in to replace Jacon Sakala and his two wins came against Pitso Mosimane’s SuperSport United (3-1) and Hunt’s Swallows (1-0). He would later thump Dynamos 5-1 once he had returned to Rangers.
Following his national team duties, Komphela returned to coaching in the PSL with a side he had captained with distinction as a player in Free State Stars.
He would have two spells there also, the first in the 2008/09 season in which he led the side to a hugely impressive fourth place in the league, their best ever finish in the topflight.
He went to Platinum Stars after that but was back in the Free State for a second stint the following season and this time he stayed for three-and-a-half years. He took the side to ninth, sixth and seventh in the three completed seasons at the club before he left for Maritzburg United midway through 2013/14. It is fair to say he got this Free State side to over-achieve, even though they won no silverware.
Komphela’s first six months at Maritzburg were a struggle but they finished 10th at the end of the season and then built on that to end in eighth the following campaign and earn MTN8 qualification.
That was a decent return for Komphela on a tight budget and he had the side playing some decent football. But then came the call from Kaizer Chiefs.
If there is one regret Komphela may have it is that he could not make it work at Chiefs, where he had also been a stalwart player. The club had largely ignored local coaches before they brought him on board for the 2015/16 and he took over a side built by Stuart Baxter that had won the league title in two of the previous three years.
But it was also a bit of a hospital pass because the squad was aging and needed a refresh despite their success. Komphela never quite got it right as the club finished fifth and fourth in his first two seasons, before he exited following a night of violence from fans in April 2018 when Chiefs lost a Nedbank Cup semifinal to Free State Stars.
He did not finish that campaign with the team but they ended third. He also lost in the final of the Telkom Knockout to Mamelodi Sundowns and in the decider of the MTN8 to Ajax Cape Town.
Komphela was not out of work for long as he had a short spell at Bloemfontein Celtic, which started with three wins in a row and ended with four losses on the trot. He was at the cash-strapped club for the first 18 games of the 2018/19 season but left for Lamontville Golden Arrows.
He spent 18 months at Abafana Bes’thende with very limited success, finishing the first half-season in 10th and the second in 12th. He managed to avoid relegation but never truly got a talented squad to fire.
He left at the end of the Covid-19 hit 2019/20 season to join the project at Sundowns.
