The sky is the limit from Potch to Cairo

An insatiable appetite for football with all its magical moments of success and countless unforgettable experiences is something that former Potch Boys old boy, Musi Matlaba thrives on. Matlaba currently excels as the performance analyst at Al Ahly, the biggest and most decorated football club in Egypt.

In eight years, Matlaba has enjoyed countless trophy successes under the tutelage of the coach, Pitso Mosimane, and his technical team at Sundowns. He has numerous national titles and a continental trophy to boot.

This success took Mosimane to Al Ahly and, without hesitation, Matlaba followed to continue the good work. It was no surprise when Matlaba was once again a CAF Champions League winner when Al Ahly beat rival Zamalek 2–1 in the Cairo Derby.

He matriculated at Boys High in 2004 and is quite proud of his affiliation with one of the oldest schools in SA. Seventeen years later, Matlaba finds himself part of an Al Ahly team at the FIFA Club World Cup against the giant football teams like Bayern Munich. As an analyst, this gives him the perfect opportunity to test himself against the best.

“It’s my second time here at the FIFA Club World Cup and I understand the level of competition. We need to be at our best to get positive results and we have to understand that only six teams in the world participate in the tournament. Every club here has won a continental championship, so no match is easy.

To be here once was amazing, to be here for the second time is a blessing – but also a reminder that there is no substitute for hard work,” stated Matlaba. In a nutshell, Matlaba analyses countless matches and data to provide his team with advantages and exploit the opposition’s weaknesses.

“The goal is to understand the opponent and how we can do what we do best to exploit their weaknesses. We can only do this by watching a lot of their matches and simplifying that into a few important details,” he explains.

According to Matlaba, who was born in Mahikeng, his experiences at Boys High have shaped him into who he is today, and he still looks back at his College years as some of his best. “I attended Potch Central School from 1995, from Grade 3 to Grade 7. After Central, I went to St Barnabas College in Johannesburg, where I started playing football. I came back to Potch Boys in Grade 11, in 2003 and I was in Buxton.

Seeing my friends from primary school and making new friends at Boys High was the best part. I am still close to my College friends and I consider them brothers. The school years were great; the education was top-tier and challenging.” Matlaba also remembers the characters at Boys High who made his two-year stay so enjoyable. “The Grade 11 camp was fun. I laughed for the entire camp. The classes were fun. We had some characters, both students and teachers. Mr Meyer, aka ‘Dopey’, was always fun.

Mr Titch Cartwright was an amazing principal and got the best out of us, whether we knew it or not. I think we played harder in inter-house sports than in inter-school sports. The war-cries stick with you and I remember us doing one at my cousin’s wedding a few years back.”

After school, he decided to study geology but soon realised that his real passion lay with sports. Matlaba studied sports science and received an internship at Amisco right after the 2010 FIFA World Cup. This eventually led him to Bafana Bafana and a career-changing move to Sundowns.

“Football analysis was fairly new in South Africa at that time, but the coach at Sundowns (Pitso Mosimane) wanted to take his philosophy in a modern direction and wanted the team to work in a modern way. We were a team of three analysts and we did our best always to provide the players and coaches with critical information on ourselves and our opponents. It was good to see that our analysis methodologies were the same as those applied in Europe, North America and South America. So, we were just as good, if not, better,” stated the 2016 Caf Champions League winner. Still, many obstacles in this performance-driven environment on a weekly basis make his job quite challenging and stressful.

“The biggest challenge in being in professional sports is the amount of time you spend away from family and friends. You also face pressure to win every game because you are only as good as your last game. The two most fulfilling aspects are winning titles and being able to help players become better players and better human beings.”

His current job at Al Ahly in Egypt has been a next-level experience at one of the biggest and most passionately-supported clubs in world football. “Football is also passionately supported in South Africa, but it is almost a second religion in Egypt. Back home, you have other sports like cricket and rugby competing with football, but it’s football, football and more football in Egypt. Al Ahly has about 70 million supporters, which is more than the population of South Africa. I’m slowly learning Arabic and, hopefully, in a few months, I’ll be able to communicate clearly,” emphasised Matlaba.

He is invested in working hard and using opportunities to the fullest – something that will put him in good stead in Egypt for the foreseeable future. According to this serial winner, motivation comes from various sources.

“The biggest lesson I’ve learnt is that work will win when wishing won’t. Someone wants the opportunity you have and if you don’t work hard, you will lose that opportunity. I motivate myself. The company I keep and my mother and three brothers motivate me. Where I come from motivates me. But, most importantly, where I want to be, motivates me. I only have one goal – to be happy.”