Orlando Pirates and Mamelodi Sundowns legend Teko Modise sits just outside of the top 10 most capped Bafana Bafana players of all-time with 66 appearances to his name – a record he shares with South African legend Helman Mkhalele.
At his peak, Modise hardly missed a game for Bafana, be it an exhibition or qualifiers – he was always the fabric that formed a large part of the national team.
In the 2010 Fifa World Cup, the Hollywoodbets Brand Ambassador was the poster boy, starting against Mexico and Uruguay and came off the bench in the global spectacle. However, Modise is the first to admit that he did not have the best World Cup.
Regardless, Modise feels he could have played more games for South Africa if he had stayed put at Pirates. ‘Google Earth’ made the move from the Buccaneers to Masandawana in 2011, and that is when he kissed his Bafana career goodbye.
“Those 66 caps all came when I was playing for Pirates only. When I moved to Sundowns I stopped playing for the national team because there was a mandate that once I leave Pirates I will never play for the national team again and I never played for the national team again… “I could have reached 100 caps,” Modise told Izinja zeGame.
"Once I started achieving at Sundowns, instead of giving me the PSL Footballer of the Season, they gave me the SA Sports Personality of the Year, which meant I was better than a runner, a sprinter, a swimmer, but not footballers. You are better than everybody else but your peers."
Modise bagged the 2014 Gauteng Sports Personality of the Year, beating cricketer Faf du Plessis and athlete Mapasaka Makhanya, who were also at the peak of their powers at the time.
“It is one of the awards that I don’t like much – I’m not ungrateful but how is that I am not the Footballer of the Year but I am a better sports person in the entire country. It is like winning song of the year but not in the category for best album.”
Moving to Sundowns, Modise joined players such as the late Gift Leremi, Lebohang Mokoena, Oupa Manyisa, Innocent Mdledle and most recently Thembinkosi Lorch.
Unlike the rest – the fashionista, who is currently working on having his own imprint in the fashion industry, made sure to have a grand exit from The Ghost he served from 2007 to 2011.
“That day was the best and the worst day of my football career because I was called into a football career because I was called into a press conference by Orlando Pirates. I got a call on Sunday and they asked me if I have a suit, they said come, there’s a press conference on Monday,”
“Me being me, I went with a pink bow tie because if I got out, let me go out in style. So, I get there, and we have a conversation with the team then Pirates decide to release me.
“At the time I did not know where I was going. I was not playing for Pirates for about a year and a half or so. People forget that at some point I disappeared in football. I was fighting to go overseas.
“West Bromwich Albion, Aston Villa and those teams never asked for trials, it was medicals. Imagine the damage that it did to me mentally.
“I disappeared from football. What troubled me the most is that I was kept in the dark, I did not know much about the conversations, I did not know what was happening.
“When that was happening, there was the preps of the 2010 World Cup, Irvin Khoza was busy with those things and the people who were supposed to be taking care of my matters were sluggish – they were dragging their feet.
“For me I felt like the team does not buy into my ambitions anymore and the love of the game started fading,” Modise added.
With a lot more maturity at this stage of his career as ‘The General’ still forms an important part of the South African football landscape as an analyst, motivational speaker and overall humanitarian – he has found ways to bury the hatchet between himself and the Buccaneers.
“I regret the way I left. It was very emotionally taxing and for me I need to survive. The survival instinct kicked in. What happened was that once I’ve retired I went back to Irvin Khoza and apologised about how I left.
“I left Pirates and I became more successful, but I regret how I left in the sense that the football fraternity is so small, you will still bump into him and still speak. At the end of the day I am who I am because of Orlando Pirates. Sundowns are in recognition of me because of Pirates.”
