A chance occurrence at the age of 14 thrust Rulani Mokwena into coaching but in truth the new Wydad Casablanca tactician was born into football and created arguably the greatest team in the history of the South African game at Mamelodi Sundowns.
Mokwena is just 37, considered young for a topflight coach, but has already achieved more than most of his peers and is only getting started in a career that appears to have no ceiling, having recently signed with Moroccan giants Wydad.
He comes from South African football royalty, his father Julius and grandfather Eric are considered Orlando Pirates legends, while his uncle Jomo played at New York Cosmos with Pele in the 1970s and is among the finest footballers the country has produced.
The game is in his blood and many happy years spent as a child watching his family play shaped him.
"My first memory is when I was in the changeroom at Orlando Stadium, (his cousin) Bamuza Sono was there. He was playing with a soccer ball, but I was rewriting what the coach was saying on the blackboard in the room," Mokwena tells FORBES AFRICA.
That moment proved prophetic, Bamuza would go on to become an accomplished player with Jomo Cosmos, and Mokwena among the country's elite coaches. Their roles in life had already seemingly been assigned.
"I have no hobbies outside of the game, for me it is a calling.
I have served the game and given my life to it. I sacrificed so much of my childhood because I started coaching at the age of 14. I never cheated the game to get to where I am." Much of coaching is about leadership and Mokwena admits he was "extremely inquisitive" as a child, and was one of the first Black prefects at Rand Park High School in Johannesburg "As a kid I had a lot of discipline, I have always been reclusive and a deep thinker," he says. "My mother would tell me, 'there are things (in life) you must fear', but I never had that mentality.
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