Magesi players celebrate with their fans after reaching the Carling Knockout final. Picture: Muzi Ntombela/BackpagePix
It is always difficult to tell how newly-promoted teams will do in the Betway Premiership.
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Cape Town Spurs came through the promotion-relegation play-offs at the end of the 2022/23 season. The Mother City side, however, were guilty of believing too much in the players that got them promotion.
Spurs lost their first eight games of the campaign and never recovered, finishing the season seven points adrift at the bottom of the table.
Automatically promoted Polokwane City fared far better, sneaking into the top eight on the final day of the season.
And they have carried on with that trajectory into the new campaign. Rise and Shine are the only side to have beaten Mamelodi Sundowns in the league this season, and are currently third in the table, behind only Sundowns and Orlando Pirates.
Clinton Larsen’s Magesi FC won last season’s Motsepe Foundation Championship, and the good news for them is that their season looks set to be more Polokwane City than Cape Town Spurs.
After a slow start, losing their first two Premiership matches, Magesi are unbeaten in the league, but even more impressively, they have surged into the Carling Black Label Knockout final.
The Limpopo side haven’t even needed extra time en route to the final, stunning Orlando Pirates in the last 16, and then edging out TS Galaxy and Richards Bay. They are only the second newly-promoted team ever to reach the league cup final, in its current and previous incarnations.
Larsen is an experienced head coach, and his football is built more on pragmatism than purity. Experienced goalkeeper Edson Chirambadare has been Man-of-the-Match in all three of Magesi’s Carling Knockout matches up to now.
As well as making the 32 year-old Zimbabwean R300 000 richer, this also tells you exactly how much defending Magesi have had to do.
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Larsen has built a side prepared to soak up plenty of pressure and hit you on the break. Magesi will certainly need to increase their efficiency in attack if they are to climb into the top eight in the league this season.
But for now, they can be more than happy with their start, and dream of a fairytale ending in the Carling Knockout final.
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