Dear Richard …
I read with utter horror your four sentence ‘article’ once again on South African player Thabo Rakhale, and the headline of your article reads: ‘South African player produces the most outrageous showboat in football history’.
Hehehe, a bit of an exaggeration, especially with the use of the word “outrageous”, as if this is the first time the world has ever witnessed anybody use their talent on the field of play.
Now this is not the first time you have gone on to criticise and chastise our football as seen in your article published on 12 March 2015.
Here is the thing: I don’t know why this bothers you so much as a former cricket player, why you have dedicated two articles to one person about something you consider as irrelevant. You stoop to levels of describing it as “a wonderfully pointless display of nonsense”, this making you sound so bitter, so angry.
From someone that actually took some time writing this article, if you thought that your twitter trolls with their outrage over your article were bad, this is the worst form of trolling on your part Sir.
You have the audacity to write about our football, nothing positive, just the usual repetition of words, like ‘pointless’, ‘outrageous’, ‘wonderful’ … aargh! And the insults moving from “utterly pointless – and mind-blowingly wonderful” to “a wonderfully pointless display of nonsense”
YAWNS, can an article be so POINTLESS and NONSENSICAL!!!
Now let’s talk for a minute about the English Premier League.
1. I follow English football because of the competiveness and unpredictability of the league but, truth be told, the football played is such a total bore, like robots assembled in the field and told to pass the ball forward until it reaches the back of the net. The players may be talented, but they aren’t creative or even skilful, so I don’t blame you for writing these articles about Thabo Rakhale’s creative flair – you aren’t used to such creativity in the EPL.
2. The EPL is dominated by foreigners who are actually contributing to its competiveness and unpredictability. Maybe you should start writing articles about why the EPL isn’t being dominated by English players. I’ll tell you why, they don’t know how to PLAY ball!
I am not even going to begin to talk about the Scottish Premier League, the league of your home country, probably one of the worst in the world.
Brazil and Spanish football have been the football meccas for the past few years because of their dominance, competiveness and style of play – both these nations play some beautiful creative football with flair. We have also seen players in Europe show their creative flair, so I wonder why you never wrote an article insulting their skill.
Showboating is not part of my – or South Africans’ – vocabulary because we know where we come from with our football. That has been our identity – players like Jomo Sono became legends because of their creativity and skills.
In our South African lingo,we call it ‘KASI FLAVOUR’ – we appreciate it as fans of the game, and when a team is two goals up in stoppage time it excites us when a player showcases their skill, their talent.
Back in the day our stadiums were packed, with fans getting full value for their money. The league was entertaining, but since the introduction of this European-style football, our football has become increasingly BORING, with fans resorting to snubbing stadiums to rather go and watch football in their numbers in townships, where they know they won’t be disappointed because what is played is what supporters of the beautiful game identifies with.
As a parting shot, let me say this: Stop criticising our football and repeating yourself with boring and pointless articles that add no value to our Rand or even your Pound. Visit our country some day and learn about our football, this football we describe as ‘kasi flavour’. It will probably remove this ignorance and naivety purported in your articles, and you’ll maybe stop describing Thabo Rakhale as a ‘truly ridiculous footballer’ to an ‘unbelievably talented creative football genius’.
Ke Footbollo Nthwena
Palesa Motshoene.