Cape Town - Now that the Soweto Derby is a thing of the past, AmaZulu will be sharing national football's spotlight with Orlando Pirates over the next days in the run-up to the MTN8 final.
The final is on Saturday at the 55 000-seater Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban and has already captured the imagination of the football fraternity. All the tickets were snapped up in a matter of two days last week when sales were opened.
The Moses Mabhida Stadium has become the spiritual home of the MTN8 final. It will host the final for the third successive year, and the seventh time in the past 10 years. During that decade, Pirates won the title once (2020), with Thulani Hlatshwayo the captain. It was his second conquest as a captain after he won the title with Wits University in 2016.
Pirates 2020 conquest however was their 10th title in the history of the competition.
All of these snippets and titbits of MTN8 trivia, leave AmaZulu in the shade because they have never featured in the competition’s final before. Previously the event was known as the SAA Super 8 (2003–2007) and the BP Top 8 (1972–2002) and there was no sign of AmaZulu.
The only KwaZulu-Natal connection with the competition was in October 2009 when Lamontville Golden Arrows routed Ajax Cape Town 6-0 in a one-sided MTN8 final played at Orlando Stadium. It was a record score for a final.
AmaZulu have a huge following in KZN and has strong cultural links with the AmaZulu Royal Family and the AmaZulu Kingdom. They will be willing AmaZulu on to create history and become the first AmaZulu team to win the Top 8 and take the record R8 million winner-takes-all prize.
AmaZulu are somewhat of a surprise finalist given their poor run in the Premiership this season. They are in the seventh position and have only won four matches in 13 outings. They did well to dump Kaizer Chiefs in the semi-final round. Chiefs are the most successful club in the history of the competition with 15 titles. Pirates fare next best with 10 titles.
Saturday's final will also be a watershed moment for one coach, both of whom have been mocked and labelled 'plumbers' but they proved their detractors wrong and have made it through the championship round.
Whoever the victor will be means that Pirates’ Jose Riveiro and AmaZulu’s Romain Folz will pick up their first piece of silverware in South African football. Folz, after a few months, has just bagged his first win on SA soil after AmaZulu defeated Stellenbosch FC 1-0 on Sunday afternoon.
Spaniard Riveiro has enjoyed some success since his high-profile arrival at Pirates with the promise of modern football methods and fresh ideas on how to approach the game.
The 32-year-old Folz has recently come into the hot seat at Usuthu, where expectations are high that the club will end their 30-year wait for silverware.
Owner Sandile Zungu has put winning a trophy down as a priority this season and the young manager is very close to delivering on that.
For whichever coach wins, it will be the first major trophy of their careers and potentially the springboard to bigger things as they prove their worth a little more in the eyes of local fans.