Somma for Sør-Afrika mot Kenya i kveld, kl 19.45....
South Africa were meant to be playing Burkina Faso but they couldn't organise it. Kenya are woeful. Ranked 127 in the world (only just ahead of Luxembourg!) so he should score shitloads against them. (WACCOE)
South Africa’s Leeds connection thrives
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by Peter Davies 07/02/2011, 11:37
For those Bafana fans still somewhat sceptical that Davide Somma has the tools to end this country’s goal-scoring problems, his recent exploits at Leeds United may provide some comfort.
Then again, I may be biased. As many of you will know, I have been an ardent Leeds United fan since the 70s glory days, and would probably be forced to admit a smidgen of rose-tinted analysis when it comes to this once-great Yorkshire club.
But Somma has now bagged eleven goals this season, two in his last two games including the winner this weekend against Coventry. He has a nose for goals like few others in this division. And before you sniffily dismiss the Championship as a low-grade league, don’t forget Jay Bothroyd of Cardiff got an England call-up not long ago.
Avid Leeds followers like myself have noted with frustration that, after Somma made his Bafana debut against the USA, he hardly featured for his club in the following two months. Leeds manager Simon Grayson consistently picked new signings Billy Paynter and Ross McCormack ahead of him, which from this vantage point seemed pretty unfathomable, as both these strikers are yet to notch a goal for Leeds.
Sanity prevailed when Somma was re-introduced in the FA Cup replay against Arsenal, and he has started in the last couple of matches.
“He's done brilliant to be fair," Grayson said after Saturday’s winner at Coventry. "We sent him out on loan last season, he started this season with a bang and then he was out of the team because of the formation we were playing, but he's scored whenever he's come off the bench. He's still got a lot more work to do with his overall play, but he's certainly got that one thing that a striker lives off, and that's knowing where the back of the net is. He can shoot with both feet, he's strong, he works hard and he's got all the right ingredients."
Hopefully South Africans will give Somma their full backing should he start against Kenya on Wednesday. I know the potential for South African strikers to get short shrift from local fans. Another Leeds United striker whose exploits were often barracked and scorned was Phil Masinga, whose less than elegant approach failed to endear him to those fans for which aesthetics in the beautiful game is everything.
What those fans often failed to grasp was that Masinga was usually in the right place at the right time -- 18 goals in 58 appearances -- including that wonder strike against the DRC that booked our place at France ’98. That goal will probably vie with Siphiwe Tshabalala’s goal against Mexico in the World Cup opener as the best Bafana goal of all time.
Of course for someone who is a fan of both Bafana and Leeds it’s great to have David Somma around to extend the Yorkshire connection.
He will have to go somma way (couldn’t resist, sorry) however to have as big an impact on Leeds as the man who is still known around those windswept parts as The Chief.
I got to stay in the rather dingy digs shared by Lucas Radebe and Phil Masinga when the pair first went over to Yorkshire in 1994. I’ll never forget interviewing then manager Howard Wilkinson in his cramped office at Elland Road. I asked how the pair was shaping up in the biting English winter. Without skipping a beat Sgt Wilko thundered: “They’d be doing a lot f…ing better if they didn’t f..ing off back to Africa every f…ing week.†Clearly the club versus country issue ran deep with the blunt-speaking Wilkinson.
At the time Masinga was the man who Leeds had paid biggish money for. Radebe was an afterthought signing, someone to keep ‘Waltzing Masinga’ company. It took a mere month or so for Wilkinson to deduce that Lucas was the better prospect. He certainly didn’t get that one wrong.
I was thus at Elland Road for the start of Lucas’s Leeds United career and was also at his testimonial in 2005, when he bade farewell to a packed Elland Road. I had full access to the change rooms, touchline and after-match banquet, and got to hang out with Lucas and the likes of Tony Yeboah, Ally McCoist, Vinny Jones, Gary McAllister, Gordon Strachan, Nigel Martyn, Lee Sharpe, Olivier Dacourt and Gary Speed. Masinga and Doctor Khumalo also played that day, and the love and respect accorded Radebe had to be witnessed to be believed.
Radebe may be the best known South African to grace Elland Road, but another South African preceded Lucas at Leeds and very rarely gets the credit he is due. Back in the early 1960s Albert Johannesen became the first black player to appear in an FA Cup final (in 1965 against Liverpool). He was a devilishly tricky winger -- known by Leeds fans as the Black Pearl -- and part of the great Don Revie side that dominated English football in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Johannesen’s star faded as that of another Leeds legend, Eddie Gray, began to rise. Life after football was not so sweet either, and he died alone and alcoholic in a Leeds bedsit in 1995.
One day hopefully, his full story will be done justice and Johannesen will be given the credit he deserves as a pioneer for African footballers of all races, who these days command such staggering salaries in Europe.
