‘I owe Pit so a lot’

KICK OFF: You enjoyed a stellar career at Bloemfontein Celtic, Orlando Pirates and with the Lesotho national team. Did you always see yourself going into coaching?

Lehlohonolo Seema: No, not at all! Quite the opposite in fact. I knew I wanted to stay in football but I always said there was no way I would be a coach. Never! I wanted to maybe do something in administration, but coaching was a big no. But even as a kid when I would play with friends, and then during my career, people would always say to me, ‘you would be a good coach. You know the game, you have a good feel for it and you are a good leader’. They would say that the way I conducted myself meant I would take to coaching very well. But I did not see that myself and I just wasn’t interested.

So what changed for you?

When I retired through injury in 2010, my wife and I were looking at what I could do next. We had some investments and money saved from my career, so we were looking at various different businesses and I went to a number of meetings to discuss proposals. And the same thing happened every time. All the people wanted to talk about was football and my career. We would maybe spend 10 minutes talking about what I was there for and the rest all