As much as Vasco da Gama’s head coach Elton Swartz and his counterpart from FC Tafelzucht, Oswald Sauls, both preached that the Coke Cup final is about their players, one cannot deny that there is a ‘battle within a battle’ due to the history between the two up and coming coaches.
The 50-year-old Sauls and his much younger rival Swartz (35) are former teammates at the Northerns LFA side United FC in Bishop Lavis and know each other very well obviously.
With so much at stake one can expect that there will be no love lost during the 90 minutes at the Athlone Stadium on Saturday, but it’s pretty clear that the level of respect, especially from Swartz’ side, remains intact.
“Yes, I was a junior at United FC under-11 when Mr Oswald was playing in the Super League in the LFA and Shell Promotional League at that time” Swartz explained to No Bones with Jones. “My brother Ricardo Swartz was the goalkeeper at that time with Mr Oswald and I used to travel to every game.
“Me, as an u11 player at centre-back and right-back, was looking up to them and watching what our senior players were doing and trying to copy them you know and that’s where I started idolizing Mr. Oswald.
“He was hard on tackles, not the loudest in the team, but a good organiser at the back and that’s where I picked up a lot of tips as I was growing up. The circle went full turn as now he will be on the other side of the technical area so it’s going to be weird but exciting at the same time,” Swartz concluded.
It’s fair to say that the pressure will be more on Vasco da Gama than that of FC Tafelzucht – for obvious reasons. Another aspect that will be playing in Swartz’ mind is the fact that he would also emulate coach Andrew Pequeno of bringing more success to the club following the latter’s promotion exploits to the ABC Motsepe League recently.
Tafelzucht, who seems to relish the underdog tag, have humbled former champions and favourites like Hanover Park FC, Young Pirates and Saxon Rovers en route to their very first Coke Cup final, and this will be at the forefront of Swartz’ thoughts.
The Tafelsig-based side, along with its passionate and partisan support, have taken this prestigious competition by storm and would surely want to complete the fairytale ending.
Hence, it will be interesting to see how Vasco will deal with this kind of pressure given the force of Tafelzucht.
