Clinton Larsen silenced his critics by proving he still belongs among South Africa’s top coaches, despite once seeming unlikely to return to the top division.
Larsen’s coaching career began brilliantly when he led Bloemfontein Celtic to a number of high finishes in the league. Back in the early 2010s, the former Orlando Pirates and Manning Rangers midfielder was regarded as one of the brighest young coaches in the country.
However, a number of jobs after his early success did not go as planned.
In 2020, Larsen was shown the door by Polokwane City after the club were relegated from the Betway Premiership. That came almost a year after he was fired by struggling Chippa United.
In December of 2018, it was Golden Arrows who fired him, and a brief spell in charge of Maritzburg United ended when he was sacked after just nine matches.
However, it was his 2020 dismissal by the relegated Polokwane City that marked a low point in his career.
He turned to the lower tiers of South African football to rebuild his career. His first job after leaving Rise and Shine was in the ABC Motsepe League with KwaZulu-Natal’s Summerfield Dynamos.
After impressing with Summerfield, he was appointed as the coach of Magesi FC in January last year. At the time, they were playing in the second tier. The rest, as they say, is history.
Under Larsen, Magesi won the Motsepe Foundation Championship and were promoted to the Betway Premiership. In his first season back in the big leagues, he has turned his unfancied outfit from rural Limpopo into giant killers and Carling Knockout champions.
On Saturday, they did the unthinkable and beat Mamelodi Sundowns, the undisputed king of South African football, 2-1 in the Carling Knockout Cup final.
While many had written off Larsen, he did not see it that way as he slowly rebuilt his reputation.
“It depends on who you ask if I was written off. I mean, Summerfield didn’t write me off; they gave me an opportunity,” Larsen said, according to FARPost.
“Maybe you’re talking Premier League. You know, sometimes as a coach, when you’re involved in, whether you’re at a club and it gets relegated, somehow people lose faith in your ability as a coach.
“And I went to a Polokwane City team. The day I arrived, they had just lost 10 games in a row, 10 games. So from 30 points, they had got zero.
“We went into a [Covid-19] bubble, and it was a very complicated bubble for Polokwane City, and yeah, things didn’t work out. The club got relegated. And probably some PSL bosses felt this coach is not good enough. And that’s how things fanned out.
“For three seasons, I was out of the league. But I still worked in the ABC and joined Magesi in the NFD. And now I’m trying to survive one more time in the PSL.”
IOL Sport