Orlando Pirates assistant Rhulani Mokoena awash with advice for aspirant coaches

Astute Orlando Pirates assistant coach Rhulani Mokoena had sage advice for aspiring coaches at the Powerade Performance Academy held at the Coca-Cola SA head office in Melrose Estate.

Mokoena was one of four speakers at the coaches workshop who gave a profound presentation titled Cultivating a human-centric coaching philosophy.

“I want us all here to understand that players are human beings [foremost] before their professional career or their development on the long road to professional careers,” he said.

“You need to understand the human in the player before you can criticise him or her bad performance. You need to understand the human in the athlete before you can dish out tons and tons of workload,” said the coach who has never kicked a ball as a player but seems destined to be a great soccer manager.

Mokoena was born into a sporting family with his grandfather, father and uncle Jomo Sono all playing for Pirates. He has carved a career as coach of grassroots development teams such as Fulham, Sabelo Super Stars and Black Poison before joining elite teams such as Platinum Stars with Steve Komphela and Mamelodi Sundowns with Pitso Mosimane.

He said coaches needed to know their players as if they were their own sons and daughters, sisters or brothers. “You must be able to gauge if something is not cool with your player. You must know your player’s likes and [dislikes] and what he or she ate last night or the day before.

“If you want to be a great coach, you must be a life-long student of the beautiful game or any other sporting code. You should read and know and understand the latest trends in that sport and be able to keep abreast of issues.

“You must at all times align yourself with the [soccer] giants before you, as they are the walking encyclopedias of the sport but most importantly, develop a thick skin to wade off criticism and a soft heart to accept the criticism and use the good points.”

Mokoena is considered to have been the brains behind Sundowns’ success locally and in Africa and the current run of form at the Buccaneers.

He prides himself as having turned around the fortunes of wayward player Percy Tau and built the career of Motjeka Madisha at the Brazilians.

“I had built such an amazing relationship with the mother of Percy such that whenever something went wrong at home, she would pick up the phone and tell me, ‘coach your boy is naughty again’. This is what it means to be a coach. Parents must trust you with their kids and the kids will eventually trust you too.”