Cape Storm

In just six months, Cape Town City turned themselves from a dodgy offseason buyout transaction to already the football story of the season. Defying odds and slaying giants along the way, the new Cape Town noisy neighbours have taken the Cape and the Premier Soccer League by storm. There’s a defeaning silence from their critics, but are they making loud calls to do the unthinkable and lift the Absa Premiership?

- Fabio De Dominicis

Cape Town Stadium’s Conference Room A was packed to capacity, abuzz with excitement and expectation. Media, distinguished guests and officials from across the Mother City gathered in anticipation, the chitterchatter mostly a guessing game as to what name would be revealed behind the silk curtain covering a large canvas at the front that was about to be unfurled. The date was 29 June 2016, the day flamboyant and ambitions businessman John Comitis announced the birth of Cape Town City FC.

It was a shrewed move, the name pulling the heartstrings of the yester-year supporters who remembered the club with the same name that campaigned so successfully in the 1970's.

True to its manifesto, the club appealed to “the Cape Town boytchees in their vests, the pretty girls on their pecs, the hippies, hip-hoppers and the hispters; the suburban moms and ghetto dads”. Derisory snickering followed, but the last laugh was reserved for The Citizens.

Seated to the right of the auditorium entrance, donning flashy new snap-backs (caps) they had just been hastily handed, were 14 members of the previous season’s Mpumalanga Black Aces squad, meekly sitting in the background while their new boss held court.

Comitis had relocated a side that finished fourth the season before all the way from Gauteng to Cape Town, with only half the squad agreeing to make the move.

But the switch wasn’t the worst thing for current captain Lebogang Manyama, whose knowledge of Cape Town from his previous incarnation at Ajax Cape Town must have assuaged fears for many of the newcomers.