According to the podcast, Ace Ntsoelengoe was inducted into the DWHOF together with the Kaizer Chiefs.  I had been long meaning to mount a campaign for Ace’s induction, especially in the run-up to the World Cup ... but I was simply too lazy to send a nomination into the Ramble Force.

Ace was my favorite player growing up ... in Minnesota (USA), where he played for the Kicks in the old NASL.  (For reasons I never quite nderstood, the apartheid era boycott of South African footballers in Europe didn’t extend to the USA.)  In the run-up to the World Cup, the BBC labelled him ‘The greatest player you never saw’ (Google that phrase on the BBC web site for the article).  He was an unbelievable juggler of the ball in game conditions—some of the stuff he pulled off in matches was simply ridiculous, and I think it was a measure of the high esteem in which he was held that no one ever retaliated against him successfully (if he’d been playing football in England at that time, I suspect his legs would have been broken by a humiliated hardman, perhaps more than once).  The best analogy I can draw with a player today is probably with Ronaldinho (before he got fat), who is also quite comfortable popping the ball up in the air and then doing things rather unexpected. NASL matches could not end in draws, and so a peculair type of ‘shoot-out’ was staged as the decider: guys would start at about the 35 yard line and have five seconds to put the ball in the net.  Ace would juggle the ball while running in at the keeper full speed and I don’t think I ever saw him not convert.

I had a Ntsoelengoe Kicks replica jersey made before heading to South Africa last June for a few weeks, and I wore it regularly over there.  Surprisingly for me, not one guy I met under the age of about 50 had ever heard of him (!), although most had a pretty detailed knowledge of the Premier League.  One guy did say ‘I think my dad used to talk about him’.  When I took off my jacket and showed the jersey to a few older guys, however, they broke into huge smiles.  (I am talking about black South Africans here, of course—as I’d expected, the white and Indian dudes had never heard of him, regardless of their age.)

An excellent choice for the Dean Windass Hall Of Fame!