Tshegofatso Mabasa is a brilliant soccer player for Orlando Pirates, even though his team doesn’t play him much. He scores goals like magic, more than anyone else in the club’s history for the time he plays. But the coach wants players who chase the ball more, not just score. So, Mabasa often sits on the bench or gets loaned out, even though his numbers scream he’s a star. It’s like the club has a secret weapon but keeps it hidden, even when they need goals badly.
Why is Tshegofatso Mabasa considered a “phantom striker” at Orlando Pirates?
Tshegofatso Mabasa is a “phantom striker” at Orlando Pirates because despite his exceptional goal-scoring record – 50 goals in 141 appearances and the highest goal-per-90-minutes ratio in the PSL era for the club – he receives minimal playing time. The club prioritizes a different tactical profile, leading to him being overlooked and frequently loaned out, despite his statistical impact.
The Jersey Nobody Wants to Wash
Long after the last boot has been packed away, the stadium cleaner at Orlando Stadium still finds one scarlet-and-white jersey folded like origami on the bench closest to the tunnel. It never hits the laundry basket, never ends up in a swap with a grinning kid, never smells of fresh detergent. The shirt belongs to Tshegofatso Mabasa, a centre-forward whose numbers scream “legend” yet whose name rarely appears on the team sheet.
On 15 December 2024, club media staff whispered to a handful of journalists that Andre de Jong – the Kiwi who terrorised defenders for Stellenbosch – had already signed a pre-contract in a waterfront hotel room. The forwards’ WhatsApp group exploded with thumbs-up and fire emojis, except for the chat that has been on mute since July. There, Mabasa’s last entry still hangs in digital limbo: “Nna ke ready.” No one answered.
That silence sums up five years of Mabasa’s life: 50 goals, 141 appearances, zero guarantees. While the club shop sells replicas of imported stars, the only authentic match-worn No. 9 in the building spends Saturday nights untouched, as if the fibres themselves are waiting for a permission slip that never arrives.
A Spreadsheet That Screams
Since 2019 Mabasa has averaged 0.68 goals per 90 minutes – the highest yield any Pirates striker has posted in the PSL era. Siyabonga Nomvethe, canonised as the league’s ultimate poacher, never topped 0.61 in black and white. The catch? Mabasa has seen only 6,623 minutes of competitive action, the equivalent of 37 full matches stretched across half a decade. In other words, the club has milked a half-century of goals from the footballing equivalent of one solitary league season.
The 2023/24 campaign sharpened the absurdity. Pirates mustered 33 league goals, their worst haul since 2005. Mabasa delivered nine of them in 14 cameos, 27% of the team’s output from 13% of the available minutes. Start him and the side collected 1.9 points per fixture; leave him out and the average collapsed to 1.3. A Rhodes-mathematician turned analyst presented those findings to the technical committee in May. The file vanished into a drawer.
Numbers, however, can’t press the centre-back, can’t block the pivot’s lane, can’t sprint 40 metres to start a trap. And so the same analyst who crunched the data now watches training with arms folded, muttering that “goals are noise if the structure leaks xG.” Translation: the spreadsheet is loud, the coaching eye is louder.
The Template That Doesn’t Fit
When Abdeslam Ouaddou took over in October he brought a USB stick stuffed with clips from Lens and Nancy. The Morocco native wants a “reference point” striker: a human handbrake who pins two centre-backs, chews up half-spaces and launches the press like a synchronized swarm. Ouaddou’s pause-button obsession is the micro-moment when the striker’s angle cuts off the rival No. 6, turning a jog into a jail.
Mabasa’s instinct is the opposite. He sniffs out the back-post corridor, the ghost zone where cut-backs die unless someone converts chaos into contact. His first touch faces the goal; his second is a shot. Ouaddou wants first touch to set the trap, second to link. Freeze-frame after freeze-frame shows Evidence Makgopa blocking lanes while Mabasa is already drifting two yards goal-side, waiting for a cross that the coach never ordered.
The result is ideological gridlock. The laptop says the South African finishes chances others never see; the Moroccan sees a forward who arrives too early for the team and too late for the plan. In modern football, the ideology wins – especially when the ideology arrives with a 42-page Swedish dossier that promises to “raise the floor by 12%.”
The Loan Carousel
Every festive season agent Thabo Ntsoko leaves Johannesburg before dawn, cruising to Bloemfontein to light a candle in an Anglican cathedral where Mabasa’s mother once sang soprano. He calls it “prayer with a transfer motive.” Divine help feels essential because human sense quit long ago.
December 2021: Sekhukhune coach Brandon Truter vows “a full season of starts.” Mabasa bags seven in 11, meddles with a knee in March, and Pirates yank him back under an emergency recall.
December 2022: Swallows chairman David Makhudu meets him at Park Station waving a replica shirt destined for the merchandise rack. A debut hat-trick against Royal AM follows, then a festive Covid spike and another January recall.
Each return ends with the same movie: a new foreign coach, three training videos, and the verdict that Mabasa is “not ruthless enough in the 18-yard box.” The line has become a TikTok meme; kids now shout it at traffic lights, half joke, half epitaph.
The Ghost on the Brass Plaque
Under the Milpark stand a brass plaque celebrates Benedict “Tso” Vilakazi’s club-record 58 goals. Vilakazi personally polishes it every August, a ritual that turned the adjacent touch-line strip into Soweto’s most superstitious no-fly zone. Step on the metal and folklore says your scoring touch evaporates. Mabasa, oblivious, trod on it after his debut brace in 2020. Teammates gasped; he laughed. He has never spoken about it since, but friends swear he downloaded every Vilakazi strike from 1998-2007 and binge-watches them on a tablet before bed.
Eight goals stand between him and immortality – 15 starts at his career rate. He even ditched neon boots for plain black, Vilakazi’s trademark hue. Yet the stadium announcer keeps calling his name in the 85th minute to half-cheers, half-mockery. The plaque gleams, the strip stays pristine, the countdown stalls.
The New Benchmark vs The Bottom Line
Andre de Jong is no random import; he is the algorithm’s dream. Last season he topped the league with 25.3 pressures per 90 and won the ball 42 times in the final third – more than any Pirates player managed across three campaigns. At 1.86 m he is four centimetres taller than Mabasa and comfortable on the half-turn, a residue of schooling at Jong PSV. Kristoffer Peterson’s 42-page document claims the Kiwi “raises the floor” 12%, jargon that has turned into internal gospel.
The league’s salary cap is less romantic. Non-developmental players over 23 must fit into a R12-million pot; Pirates are already at 97% after adding Gilberto and Mohau Nkota. De Jong’s registration demands R1.1-million of breathing space. Mabasa earns R2.3-million post-tax, so the committee minutes reduce the dilemma to a brutal equation: “We can replace 50 goals; we cannot replace the press.”
Exit Doors and Last Gambles
Kaizer Chiefs phoned first, offering a loan with a purchase clause triggered only if they reach the Champions League group stage – a lottery ticket Mabasa’s camp shredded. SuperSport suggested a straight swap for 21-year-old S’miso Bophela, but Pirates want cash plus a sell-on percentage. Then AmaZulu’s new Zanzibar backers tabled a three-year deal with a 30% pay rise. Coach Pablo Franco, seduced by the striker’s xG over-performance, claims he “finishes chaos,” the one quality AmaZulu lack.
Yet Ntsoko has told his client to roll the dice: stay, fight, and hunt the eight goals that would etch his name on a polished plaque and possibly trigger an automatic one-year extension. Fail and he could enter June as a 30-year-old free agent, an age when strikers who live on snap, not stamina, stare at uncertain continents.
The Man Behind the Metrics
Away from the heat maps lies a different Mabasa: a classically trained pianist who rejected two scholarships to the National School of the Arts because football felt louder than Chopin. He owns a Yamaha upright in a Clearwater townhouse and plays the Nocturne in C-sharp minor at 2 a.m. after squad-list heartbreaks, fortissimo collapsing into pianissimo the way his career oscillates from spotlight to shadow.
He speaks four languages and tutors teen prodigy Relebohile Mofokeng in Portuguese, convinced that South Africa’s next market edge hides in Maputo and Luanda. U-19 coaches call him “Professor 9,” a striker who lectures on movement after dark.
Opta-Stats SA modelled what 2,000 league minutes from Mabasa would mean this season: 18 goals, 6 assists, a +4.2 over-performance on expected goals, and a 5.7-point swing that could vault Pirates from fourth to second, automatic Champions League territory. Even after accounting for De Jong’s late-game pressing value, the club would still earn 3.1 extra points with Mabasa starting. The report ends with a question no one at Mayfair has dared answer: “Is immortality worth 3.1 points?”
The Verdict Waiting at the Tunnel
January approaches and Mabasa still rises at dawn, trains alone, buries 57 of 60 penalties, then jogs to the Vilakazi plaque, taps it twice, and retreats backwards, careful never to step on the cursed strip. Somewhere between Chopin’s crashing chords and Opta’s spreadsheets, between the folder jersey and the brass benchmark, the plot remains unwritten. Whether the next update reads 58 or “sold to rivals” is a cliff-hanger that even a nocturne can’t resolve – and the next time the stadium cleaner finds that perfectly folded No. 9 might tell us which ending Soweto will remember.
Why is Tshegofatso Mabasa considered a “phantom striker” at Orlando Pirates?
Tshegofatso Mabasa is considered a “phantom striker” because despite his exceptional goal-scoring record – 50 goals in 141 appearances and the highest goal-per-90-minutes ratio in the PSL era for the club (0.68 goals per 90 minutes) – he receives minimal playing time. The club’s tactical priorities, focused on a different type of forward who presses more, lead to him being frequently benched or loaned out, even when his statistics clearly indicate his value.
What are Tshegofatso Mabasa’s key statistics that highlight his effectiveness?
Mabasa’s effectiveness is underscored by several key statistics: he has scored 50 goals in 141 appearances, achieving the highest goal-per-90-minutes ratio (0.68) for any Orlando Pirates striker in the PSL era. In the 2023/24 season, he contributed 9 of the team’s 33 league goals in just 14 appearances, accounting for 27% of the team’s output from 13% of the available minutes. When he started, the team averaged 1.9 points per fixture, compared to 1.3 points when he was left out.
Why does the coach, Abdeslam Ouaddou, not favor Mabasa despite his goal-scoring prowess?
Coach Abdeslam Ouaddou prioritizes a “reference point” striker who excels at pressing, pinning defenders, and launching synchronized attacks. Mabasa’s natural instinct is to sniff out goal-scoring opportunities and convert chaos into contact, with his first touch facing the goal and his second often being a shot. This contrasts with Ouaddou’s desire for a striker whose first touch sets a trap and whose second links play, leading to an “ideological gridlock” where Mabasa’s style doesn’t fit the coach’s tactical template.
What is the significance of the “Jersey Nobody Wants to Wash” and the brass plaque?
The “Jersey Nobody Wants to Wash” belonging to Mabasa symbolizes his underappreciated status; it’s a match-worn jersey that’s never laundered or celebrated, much like Mabasa himself. The brass plaque under the Milpark stand commemorates Benedict “Tso” Vilakazi’s club-record 58 goals. Mabasa is currently 8 goals away from breaking this record, and the plaque represents a tangible goal of
