I think of course apart from the years giving me opportunities to grow and learn a lot from my mistakes. the years giving me experiences I could only experience by being part of the game and being part of football. Whether be it training sessions or through games. It has made me understand not just the value of results, but also the value of process and the importance of winning football matches. I think in a way I have been able to have a stronger conviction in my ways of working and my methods and improving my ideology, my game principles and my outlook towards football. Above that, I think I have become a little bit calmer, emotionally a little bit more stable and a little more of a better man-manager

Growing up was never easy in the township of Soweto, Orlando West was never easy. Being raised by a single mother is already something that shaped me. Living with my grandmother also shaped me. She had a very important influence on my life in terms of life principles, values, respect, humility, and work ethic. My mother also had the influence, as a single mother, she was hard working and extremely focused. Demanding not just of others but of herself, this is also something that shaped me and that is how I am. but I would say coaching Orlando Pirates as a head coach was probably the most difficult but most fulfilling and rewarding period of my career. It was an amazing experience, where I learnt so much about myself, about football, football clubs, and politics in South African football. I thank God for that period and that episode because today I am a better person, and I think I am a better coach because of that experience at Pirates. I am extremely grateful and I appreciate  the opportunity that was given to me

That was an amazing experience. Being afforded that opportunity by Walter Mokoena was incredible. The Italians came into South Africa as the defending  World Champions with players such as Pirlo, Gattuso, and Canavarro, one of the best centre-backs in the world at the time. They had such an amazing team. It was incredible to be on the same pitch, in the same dugout with Marcello Lippi and competing in the same match. We had put together a relatively good squad though it was off-season and a lot of players had already gone home, we managed to get players like Happy Jele, Jackson Mabokgwane, Dino Ndlovu, Fikru Tefera, who was a  top striker in the country at the time. It was a good team we had but unfortunately, we lost, but it was a great experience. Again it showed me how possible it is to be at that level and continue to work and improve.

Playing against him for just one match wasn’t such a good thing, we lost the match and my competitive nature went into the game and expecting to win, but the reality showed that the gap is still big. When I spoke to him after the game and I asked for advice, I asked him what makes a good coach and he said to me, good players. He said never coach players that don’t believe that they are the best or don’t believe in the process of becoming the best. He said it in broken English with a cigar in his mouth, I still have a mental picture of him saying that. It was an incredible piece of advice that I kept to heart and still use to this day because as football coaches we are judged on results and even though that is not something that is  100 per cent within our control. But when you have the right quality, you are able to produce the right results through your preparation and the work that you put in. It was incredible advice and I think something that has helped many coaches to be successful, in fact at the time he made reference to Pep Guardiola because Pep was at  Barcelona, and was already winning trophies. it was such great advice and one that I will never forget.

Did it surprise me?. Not necessarily because I think we’ve all got plans, goals and ambitions. I remember when I left Complete Footballers ( athlete management agency ) because I was the head of the academy, and we were in the process with Walter, to put together an academy he had already worked so hard to get investors but I was struggling for almost a year to just sit in the office because I wanted to get back into the pitch and I said that to Walter. And he immediately picked up the phone and called Trott Moloto at Sundowns and made it possible for me to join Sundowns. They then gave me three options after I did well in the interview. Either be the head of their satellite in Soweto or be a scout, there was a vacancy in the scouting department. Immediately thought that was not me, I want to coach, I want to be on the pitch. So I believe that my work ethic has gotten me to the level I am at now. There have no handouts, a huge and incredible amount of hard work and sacrifice and extreme diligence and focus. I have always tried to be the coach that pays attention to detail and works very, very hard at improving players. When I look at where I have come from and where I am, I appreciate the influence that even God  Players on my life. Without God’s grace, without opening the right doors at the right time I don’t think  I would be where I am. For me, it’s about appreciating the people that God has sent in my way to create the opportunities that I have been given. People like Walter, all these people I have met in my career path, I am extremely humbled and I appreciate the blessings, the good moments, the bad moments, all these have shaped my journey, its an incredible journey, an incredible life story filled also with some moments of failures those are also some of the moments that propelled and pushed me to even greater heights.

When you become a South African champion and then we won the CAF Champions League it was incredible because playing in different countries, making travel arrangements to travel to different countries, being a person that works against different playing styles and preparing the team for the different playing styles, different tactical challenges that could be faced. Working with top football players in an elite club environment propels one to a different level from a technical and tactical perspective. But of course they're also a lot of learnings on what to do and also what not to do and these give one experiences and helps one to be better at coaching, to be better at management whether its upward or downward management, managing players or dealing with senior managers, whether it is horizontal or vertical with your colleagues. So you learn a lot, but the only way to do it is to be on the pitch within the environment and to do the work.

The move to Orlando Pirates was extremely sentimental. It was an opportunity to join a boyhood club, a club that my grandfather( Eric Scara Sono) had worked so hard to see the team grow and that contribution that he made.  That contribution I got to understand when I met to Mr Kaizer Motaung( Kaizer Chiefs chairman/ Founder and former Orlando Pirates player)  and he said to me that there wouldn’t be Kaizer Chiefs if my grandfather had still been alive when he ( Kaizer) came back from America, and that already shows how important he was for that club. To have the opportunity to serve the club at that type of level, my grandfather, my father( Julius Sono) my uncle ( Jomo Sono) all played for Orlando Pirates. When you get an opportunity to join the club, even though it was a difficult decision because Sundowns has always and will always be the club that I have a very strong affiliation and emotional attachment towards because they have given me so much and helped me to become the person that I am today. The reality is that when I had to make the decision, it was a difficult decision based on that sentimental appreciation towards Pitso Mosimane, the President ( Patrice Motsepe) and the players. But I think the emotional connotation, the desire to see the club succeed because of where it was at that time, became the overriding factor and became the biggest motivation. But there are no regrets because I had a great experience and I learnt a lot and became a better coach, a better human being, I became stronger and more aware of myself. I am extremely grateful for that opportunity to go to Pirates, there was that sort of alignment at the time. I have absolutely no regrets about my time at Pirates.

Quite a lot. Quite a lot because in one moment  I understood that to be a top coach involves a lot more than being just a top coach on the training pitch and that I  could only learn at Pirates. I also  learnt the importance of human values, being a good human being overrides even the greatest 

Technical skills whether you are an administrator, whether you are a coach or just a footballer and I understood the value of working with good human beings. Working with good people is something that I would never put myself in a position to work with people who I don’t have some form of connection with from a human principles perspective and its very important because it allows you to be able to get the best out of each other, as the saying ‘iron sharpens iron. I also learned a lot from a football perspective. I learnt the importance of things like rest defence, and how important o defend while having the ball. I use that experience to learn and when I left Pirates I had some time to research, travel and talk to coaches, see different things and different environments and learn from different people. So I was able to improve my ideologies and improve the way I saw football and my understanding of the game you know. Again a very special period. A period that I really appreciate.

The welcome was good. There was always a great bond and appreciation because of the work that we did before I left and when I came back Mamelodi Sundowns was warm and cordial and they were extremely appreciative of the fact that I had returned. The club even called it the return of the prodigal son. The president is and has always been a father figure to me and I am always appreciative of his support and belief that he has in my ability. And that will never change and it never hung when I went to Pirates, he never missed a single one of my birthdays even while I was at Pirates, I was always guaranteed a happy birthday message from Dr Patrice Motsepe. And that always made Sundowns a family to me and a family that I have always appreciated and will always appreciate and I was very, very happy to be back home, back home in a moment where I also thought I could add value to a moment where I felt I was coming back as a better coach and a better person.

There was interest from the National team, a big interest that was extremely tempting, one that I thought to myself this is a great opportunity but unfortunately the club at the time ( Pirates ) felt it was not the right move, the right moment to be part of the set up with the National team, felt that it would be a distraction. In hindsight, I believe that those sorts of opportunities must always be taken advantage of because they don’t come too many times, if maybe there is a single regret from my time at Pirates was that I didn’t aggressively push to join the National team to serve my nation, but as God has it and will always have it, there will be an opportunity to continue to grow and work hard and be part of Bafana Bafana will come again, and hopefully, once again I  will get a chance to represent my national team.

I fully agree that a humanist in that type of thinking speaks about there being far more important things in life than football. The person that I am who has devoted much of his life to football also understands that football is the most important thing of the least important things in life the least important things like parties and cars, money, woman, fame and fortune, football falls into the same category, its a form of entertainment, but its the most important of those and should always take priority and precedence but also family,  courage, love, peace, joy and happiness. Those are things that do not fall in the same category as football. They are in a very important category and they supersede football and when you are able to see life from that perspective, you are also able a coach that is full of empathy, and sympathy and has good emotional attachment toward players, so that I think helps to make you become a better coach, a better human being, and it gives you a better level attachment towards your job also at the same time, the attachment is towards the job, towards your work but with a full understanding of the space that we all operate in. I fully agree, in general, if you look at where we are in the world, society and football being the microscopic reflection of society, you have a clear understanding that football is reflected by what is happening outside within society. There are s loathings that really happening there’s depression, there’s a lot of loss, there’s now a war in Ukraine, between Russia and Ukraine, pandemics that we really suffering from, people are losing jobs, people are losing loved ones, there were folds in KZN and Eastern Cape, people losing homes and cars and their valuables, lives, there you have a clear recollection of how less important football, and sometimes it becomes difficult to speak about football in the midst of all the suffering and pain that people are going through. So it becomes very difficult to only value football, be that as it may, I think that we are in the game because we love the game, we want to succeed in the game and make a contribution to the game and that gives us an opportunity to create history and re-write some of these stories that will be told later in the future. You only have to be grateful for those opportunities, as the saying goes ‘history has no blank pages.