Out of sight, out of mind.
Shame, that’ss the story of one Bongani Zungu - a player whose meteoric rise in SA football is well recorded, but you would swear he is wasting away somewhere because nobody talks about him these days.
And all he did was pursue a once in a lifetime opportunity abroad to take his career to the next level, or so he thought. Zungu, who turns 23 next month, began life in Portugal two months ago where he has joined Primeira Liga side Vitoria SC on a two-year deal from reigning Absa Premiership champions Mamelodi Sundowns.
It struck me last Friday, when coach Shakes Mashaba named his 25-man Bafana Bafana squad for the upcoming opening World Cup qualifier away to Burkina Faso on October 8 in Ouagadougou, that there’s been an important player missing from the national team set-up for several months now.
Not long after it was confirmed that Zungu would be moving to Portugal to, hopefully, emulate Benni McCarthy. But the midfielder suffered a shin fracture in a league game against Maritzburg United eight months ago.
He is still on the mend, even though he had been given a recovery time of 12 weeks. The move to new club Vitoria did not fall through despite the setback, but Zungu is finding life extremely tough abroad. His club has already played six matches and life is moving on without the new signing.
Apparently, they are not putting pressure on him and aren’t planning to rush him back into action, but his national team place is now in serious jeopardy. He’s worked hard to grab the attention of Bafana selectors having only broken into the professional ranks as recently as 2012 while playing as an unknown talent for AmaTuks, who were relegated from the Premier League just as Zungu was packing his bags for Portugal.
He only spent a season at AmaTuks before Sundowns swooped and made the PSL minnows an offer they could not refuse.
His three-year stint with the Brazilians under coach Pitso Mosimane was a catwalk to the winners’ podium starting with the championship title in his maiden year. The Nedbank Cup was next, then the Telkom Knockout and another league trophy as a send-off in May. And in the midst of all that, Zungu was beginning to stake his claim in the Bafana line-up alongside Andile Jali, especially at a time when Dean Furman was struggling for form.
But he now looks set to start from scratch. As it stands, Zungu is not only having to deal with the fact that his new coach, Pedro Martins, and the club’s medical staff feel he is not yet ready to get stuck in, the midfielder also has to get used to the unfamiliar surroundings. The language is different, the weather takes some getting used to and to make matters worse, he is not on the one familiarity in a foreign country - the football pitch.
Was this a bad decision? Hard to say because of his injury. But this has all the traits of a homesick SA footballer ready to listen to PSL offers a few months down the line.
Follow Mazola Molefe on Twitter@superjourno
The Star