Komphela denies bad blood between him and Mokwena

Moroka Swallows coach Steve Komphela insisted there is no bad blood between him and his Mamelodi Sundowns counterpart Rulani Mokwena in a cryptic response to questions about their relationship.

The tension was bubbling under in the build-up to the MTN8 quarterfinal clash between the two teams. It reached boiling point when Andile Jali was red-carded for a crunching tackle on Teboho Mokoena last
Saturday.

Both benches got into a verbal altercation after the incident with the two head coaches avoiding each other. Komphela was seen shaking only Sundowns goalkeeper Wendell Robinson’s hand as the confrontation calmed down.

That gave credence to reports that Komphela and Mokwena were no longer seeing eye-to-eye before the former left The Brazilians to jump into the Dube Birds’ nest.

“I was not involved, I’m getting out of this one because I was not involved,” Komphela responded when asked about the undeniable tension between the two benches.

“No matter how bad and sad I feel, even with family, I don’t go out and show my neighbour that my wife and I have issues. You don’t do that, you have to be exemplary.

“The late Chris Hani said something very profound when it comes to character and from his words you learn a lot. There are certain things that we have to keep no matter how tight and how deep they are. One of them is to go through stress, pain, temptation and pressure with dignity.

“When that chaos erupts, you’ll hardly find me there, so if you want to put me in that soup (sic) of yours, I’m bone that belongs somewhere else.”

Contrary to what happened on the field, Komphela was complementary of the treatment he got from his former employers before the game. The 56-year-old insists he also embraced Mokwena after the game.

“We did shake hands,” he said.

“When a winning coach goes to a losing coach and shakes hands, the winning coach must have a certain measure of intelligence not to be too excited because the losing coach is not at the same stage of emotion, so that measure is developed through experience.

“You need to be conscious of everything happening around you. I know how to manage things based on who I’m up against.”