Teko Modise chatted to Power FM about his tell-all new book, The Curse of Teko Modise.

The Curse of Teko Modise is written by Nikolaos Kirkinis and will be launched by Jacana Media on 28 November at Exclusive Books Rosebank.

Click on the link above for more about the book!

Bad times Orlando Pirates

Modise left Orlando Pirates for Mamelodi Sundowns under a cloud in 2011. He says things started to ‘go very wrong’ after his first contract expired at Pirates. After the World Cup, overseas teams showed interest in the player, but Pirates, he says, did everything they could to block a move.

‘That was the start of the bad relationship between me and Orlando Pirates,’ he says, ‘with people running away and lying to me.’

Modise says he was promised the number 10 jersey at Pirates, with the team consulting with Jomo Sono to release the number, but ‘that anger and disappointment didn’t go away from me,’ the player says, and he needed to move on.

Bad relationship with Pitso Mosimane

Coach Pitso Mosimane didn’t speak to Modise for almost two years at Sundowns.

‘My relationship with Pitso has always been like that,’ the player says. ‘Even when we started at SuperSport. We would fight and come back and talk to each other. But at Sundowns things became worse.’

Modise says he doesn’t know what changed.

‘People assumed that because Pitso coached me at SuperSport it should be a father-son relationship,’ he says. ‘But people don’t understand that we disagreed on so many things, maybe because our characters are similar. Maybe it was hard for me to swallow my pride and say “I’m sorry” or for him to say the same.’

The midfielder says even when he was coming on as a sub, instructions would come from another coach, not Mosimane.

‘You understand the difficulties I went through at Sundowns. People thought I mustn’t leave Sundowns but it’s sometimes very difficult to stay in that kind of environment, where you can tell you are not longer wanted in this environment, you no longer feel like you have a purpose in this environment. But in the book I explain it better.’

On not being able to say goodbye to Sundowns fans, Modise says: ‘It was very painful. That was one thing I couldn’t understand. From that day, I was like, okay, cool. There is no loyalty in football, it’s just a word that people use. That broke me, actually.’

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Categories Non-fiction South Africa

Tags Jacana Media Nikolaos Kirkinis Podcasts Power FM Soccer Teko Modise The Curse of Teko Modise