Magic: Desiree Ellis - From Salt River to the 2023 World Cup

By Luke Alfred

‘Desiree Ellis has walked a remarkable journey. The result is that young South African girls now know they can create their own future.’ – VERA PAUW, former coach of Banyana Banyana

Desiree Ellis has been associated with Banyana Banyana, the South African women’s national football team, for 30 years – initially making her mark as a player (1993–2002), before transitioning to coaching. Taking the experience of 32 caps, including captaining the team when South Africa won the inaugural Cosafa Women’s Cup in 2002, she went on to become the most successful women’s coach in South Africa.

After a stint as assistant coach to Vera Pauw, Desiree was officially appointed head coach in 2018 and continued adding to her outstanding resumé. A high point came in 2022 when she coached Banyana Banyana to the Wafcon title in Morocco. The win also earned the team automatic qualification for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup.

But Desiree’s inspiring football journey began many years before on the streets of Salt River in Cape Town where she developed the strength and skills that earned her the nickname ‘Magic’ on the field. Back then soccer boots were only dreamed of and it was her Bata Toughees school shoes that suffered the wear and tear, often to the despair of her hardworking parents. In the early days of the Athlone Celtic women’s side, it was a family affair: (Uncle) Eddie took on the role of coach, (Mom) Natalie’s seamstress skills saw them all kitted out, and (Dad) Ernest handled everything else, from transport to scheduling games.

When Desiree’s talent and dedication saw her become a serious contender at league and then provincial level, and finally gave her a chance to play with and against the world’s best, there was no stopping her. As South Africa emerged from sporting exile after the dark days of apartheid and stepped up to the international stage, Desiree proved to everyone who believed in her that dreams can come true.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan South Africa
• Release date: May 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781770108752

Luke Alfred

Luke Alfred is an award-winning journalist and author. This is his sixth book.

Book preview

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I am because we are.

To God first and foremost.

And to my family, Banyana Banyana,

and my extended football circle.

To all the people who inspired me to follow

my dream and supported me.

– DESIREE ELLIS, April 2023

MAGIC

DESIREE ELLIS:

From Salt River to the 2023 World Cup

An authorised biography

Luke Alfred

MACMILLAN

First published in 2023

by Pan Macmillan South Africa

Private Bag X19

Northlands

2116

Johannesburg

South Africa

www.panmacmillan.co.za

ISBN 978-1-77010-874-5

eISBN 978-1-77010-875-2

In the text © Desiree Ellis 2023

In the foreword © Vera Pauw 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Every attempt has been made to ensure the accuracy of the details, facts, names, places and events mentioned in these pages, but the publisher and author welcome any feedback, comments and/or corrections on the content.

Photographs courtesy of the Ellis family and BackpagePix.

Editing by Alison Lowry

Proofreading by Sean Fraser

Design and typesetting by Triple M Design, Johannesburg

Cover design by publicide

Desiree Ellis and mural cover photographs by Lauren Mulligan

Contents

Foreword

1 ‘She was so tiny she fitted into a shoe-box’

2 The weird story of Athlone-something (and a really bad case of mistaken identity)

3 A long-distance crush

4 Football family Ellis

5 Ah, those girls from Natal

6 The post-Celtic years

7 ‘No one in Atlantis is allowed to go hungry’

8 ‘We don’t recognise you, who are you again?’

9 Small steps to Sweden

10 The late 1990s: Pain, heartbreak and more pain

11 The ‘Tovey Theory’, and Desiree’s 2002 swansong

12 Work to live? Live to work?

13 Vera Pauw: Her role in Desiree’s journey

14 Egyptian beginnings, and divine intervention in Bulawayo

15 2018, the biggest of big years

16 Yellow brick road to France? More like potholes on Jan Smuts Avenue

17 ‘A most extraordinary half of football’

18 Lockdown dead ahead

19 2021: Getting past Covid-19 and building a team

20 The penalty that caused all the fuss

21 ‘The longest nine minutes of all of our lives’

22 Reflecting on six beautifully challenging years

23 Letting your hair down the Desiree way

Acknowledgements

Foreword

When I was asked to write the foreword for a book on Desiree’s journey, I immediately said ‘yes’. It is a huge honour to try to put onto paper what Desiree means for women’s football in South Africa, in Africa and in the world, but also what Desiree means for the development of girls and women in South Africa in general.

I met Desiree when I started as the national coach of Banyana Banyana back in 2014. ‘Who will you bring as an assistant?’ was one of the questions asked during my talk with the management of the South African Football Association (SAFA). ‘I want the best female coach in the country as my assistant,’ I replied, ‘because continuity in development is crucial. When I eventually leave South Africa I would like my assistant to take over.’ And so it happened. Desiree was appointed as my assistant and, without knowing each other, we stepped into the unknown.

We worked for two-and-a-half years on a very intense but very successful project. Our first highlight was qualifying for the Rio Olympic Games 2016 by giving Equatorial Guinea their first home defeat in history. The technical staff will never forget how we planned this win! The project in general, and the way we were playing at the Rio Olympics specifically, opened the eyes of people in the world of women’s football, and with that opened doors for many players. The result of all this is that young South African girls now know they can create their own future.

In those two-and-a-half years, Desiree and I became close friends, and I have experienced that Desiree is unconditionally faithful to those who are faithful to her. We support each other in the challenges in our journey. Neither one of us forgets where we come from. If anyone was ready for the job when I left South Africa after the Rio Olympics, Desiree was. SAFA kept its word and appointed her as head coach. With that, SAFA made the next step in planning their success in women’s football! It was a crucial decision to create continuity.

And what a journey Desiree has been on. She introduced her own style and her own path. She has been in charge now for seven years. She won the Confederation of Southern African Football Association’s (Cosafa) Cup first and, from that moment, Banyana Banyana kept on the winning path. She has qualified twice for the International Federation of Association Football’s (FIFA) World Cup (in 2019 and 2023) and her most recent and most proud moment was winning the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (Wafcon) in Morocco in 2022. To get there, Banyana Banyana had to beat the traditional African powerhouse, Nigeria. With these achievements, she deservedly won the Confederation of African Football (CAF) Coach of the Year in 2018, 2019 and 2022.

To my mind, it is unbelievable that Desiree wasn’t nominated for FIFA’s Best Coach of the Year in 2022 after winning the most difficult championship, Wafcon, while the coaches of the European and South American champions were nominated. With respect to their performances, it is a glaring omission that Desiree did not receive just recognition for her stellar performance in Africa.

This is the best example I know of why the FIFA ranking system does not work for African countries, players and coaches. The FIFA ranking system keeps African performances under the radar. I am so proud of Desiree. I wish her only the best and the recognition she deserves. This book tells you where she has come from and shows you the path she has taken.

Let me finish by expressing a wish for the future. How good would it be if Desiree can now prepare her successor so that women’s football in South Africa grows to even greater heights? South Africa has the potential to become a powerhouse in women’s football under Desiree and under her eventual successor. She has walked a remarkable journey.

Vera Pauw

Nieuwleusen, the Netherlands

March 2023

1

‘She was so tiny she fitted into a shoe-box’

‘Desiree was born two months premature at three pounds 11 ounces [1.6 kg]. She spent the first five months of her life in an incubator at the Cape Peninsula Maternity Hospital in District Six, a hospital that no longer exists. She was so tiny she fitted into a ­shoe-box.’ – Natalie Ellis

Open any map of Salt River in Cape Town’s eastern suburbs and your eye is immediately drawn to Salt River Circle. Four roads radiate off the circle – Durham Avenue, Salt River Road, Albert Road and Voortrekker Road – each street name providing a summary of the main geographical, social and political currents in the suburb’s history.

Salt River, for example, is the river that once ran off the lower slopes of Devil’s Peak before making its way to Table Bay; Voortrekker Road gestures to the trekboers who headed from the Cape into the hinterland in 1838 in search of unknown freedoms and the unblemished word of God; while Albert (the eastward extension of which is called Malta Road) refers to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Prince Albert was Queen Victoria’s first cousin, and, strange as it may sound today, he was the man she chose to marry in the grandest of society weddings in February 1840.

Running off Albert Road at right angles close to the circle is Westminster Road and there’s a street behind that, running at a slight diagonal to Albert this time, called Junction Road. Westminster and Junction are joined by Greef, a road that has great meaning in the Ellis family because Susan Ellis, Desiree Ellis’s late paternal grandmother, lived at house number 36 on Greef Street.

Susan played an important role in Desiree’s early development. Because both of Desiree’s parents worked, Susan fulfilled the duties of a caretaker parent to their children. Desiree’s dad, Ernest, was employed for 18 years as a typewriter technician at Northern Office Equipment in Cape Town’s central business district, while her mother Natalie worked as a dressmaker and seamstress in the Salt River and Woodstock textile factories after leaving school. ‘Auntie Susan’ provided informal aftercare for not only Desiree, who was born on14 March 1963, but Erna, born two years later, and Carmelita, born the year after that.

Ernest and Natalie’s fourth daughter, Bertina, was born in 1970 and she, too, was taken care of by Auntie Susan. Like her three older sisters, she went to Dryden Street Primary School around the corner from Greef Street, but the children were often dropped off at Auntie Susan’s well before they were of an age to go to school because there was no one to care for them at home with both Ernest and Natalie at work during the day.

Desiree was a worry to her parents when she was a baby. She was born two months prematurely and spent the first few months of her life in an incubator in the hospital.

Ernest and Natalie loved her to bits – she was their first child – but in the beginning it wasn’t certain that she would develop properly and be able to lead a normal life. Natalie used to knit and crochet her tiny clothes and sometimes during daily afternoon visits to the hospital she was allowed to put her hands into the incubator and change Desiree’s nappy (or ‘kimmy throw’, as she called it).

When Desiree was less than two months old she took a turn for the worse. She wasn’t growing and the doctors at the Cape Maternity Hospital were concerned. They didn’t know if she was going to survive. Fearing for her daughter’s life, Natalie quickly had her baptised by an Anglican priest right there in the hospital. She was duly baptised Desiree Alice Ellis, the first daughter of Ernest and Natalie Ellis. Desiree has always hated her name, mainly because she was roundly mocked at school for having a middle name and surname that sounded so similar. The band Smokie’s song ‘Living Next Door to Alice’ was on the hit parade when Desiree was playing club football and her teammates never tired of reminding her that she had such strange names.

The Alice in her baptismal name is very seldom used, but there’s a twist, Desiree says. Neither Natalie nor Ernest were able to register their daughter’s birth because they worked during the day, and so this task fell to one of Ernest’s cousins, whose name was Alice. Instructions were given to Alice that the names to be recorded on the baby’s birth certificate were Desiree Glynis Ellis, but when the time came Alice was confused – perhaps because Desiree had already been baptised with the second name ‘Alice’ – and somehow she managed to have the child registered as ‘Alice’ and not ‘Glynis’, as her parents’ preferred middle name. Desiree laughs about it today.

After five months of worry, Desiree finally came out of the incubator for good. Natalie and Ernest were thrilled to be able to take their baby home. They knew they had a top-class little fighter on their hands. Within the confines of the family home, their fighter was sometimes called Alice in Wonderland.

Despite the fact that Natalie had given birth to only girls, the ever-optimistic Ernest kept on trying for a boy. He was finally rewarded when Basil was born five years after Bertina. The couple’s five children were spread out across a nine-year period between 1963 (when Desiree was born) and 1972 (when Basil was born).

Auntie Susan (or Auntie Suzie, as she was sometimes called), meanwhile, continued to provide warmth and counsel. She fed the children (sometimes Natalie provided packed lunches) and gave them fruit. She bathed them and offered advice when asked. With her good-natured eyes peering out from behind her large glasses, she listened, a beacon of stability in the children’s busy lives.

Sometimes the growing brood of Ellis children were joined by their three cousins: Ivor, Donovan and Bradley. With cousins in the ranks and two or three Ellises, the Greef Street gang could nearly make up a street soccer side. Auntie Susan lived in Greef Street but it was in Westminster Road, close to the intersection with Foundry Road, that Salt River’s epic afternoon street soccer matches took place, with halves of indeterminate length and no more than six or seven a side.

Desiree enjoyed life on the streets of Salt River and her high energy levels and natural exuberance found an immediate outlet in street soccer. She wasn’t one to play with dolls and never liked wearing dresses, once complaining to Ernest after Natalie bought her a swanky dress as a teenager that she would never wear it. Instead she retreated somewhere dark and private to have a good cry.

She played with boys – and girls – but mostly boys because her cousins were boys and boys were good at things she liked doing and was herself good at, as in those days not many girls played predominantly ‘boys’ sports’. Ball games were played outside to the constant sound of the trains that clattered up or down the nearby railway line. She loved the vitality of street life, the smell of Table Bay and the docks, and the muzzle of fog, which often flooded into Salt River as summer cooled through autumn and into winter; she loved the noises of the streets, the dogs, the shouting, the endless passing parade, people calling to one another, the shouting and the vloeking. Being cooped up indoors was boring by contrast.

In 1970 Desiree started school. This was Dryden Street Primary, which was close to Auntie Susan’s house on Greef Street. To get there the children had to cross the much busier Albert Road, though, so they crossed carefully, holding hands, when they were either going to school or returning home for the afternoon.

Although she was a clever child, and with an annual R400 school bursary to help her and the family, her mind was on sport and soccer, so for Desiree school was a chore to be endured, and this she did with her customary perky equanimity. What she really looked forward to while growing up was what happened after school and she was free to roam the streets and do her own thing with her sisters, cousins and schoolmates.

For Desiree the streets meant freedom. Sometimes she and her sisters and cousins would go to Salt River Station to watch the trains as they either moved up the line to Cape Town’s central station or sped down towards Mowbray and Rondebosch and stations beyond that. They would play in the green space abutted by Westminster Road, just a kink of the road away from Greef Street where Susan lived.

Desiree tried her hand at cricket and even rugby, although rugby was played with a strange-shaped ball that bounced wildly and unpredictably. She wasn’t sure if she liked that very much. A sport where the bounce of the ball couldn’t be trusted was a sport that couldn’t be trusted. She also tried netball. It was thought of as girls’ stuff and you stood still at least some of the time.

At Natalie’s insistence she even tried ballet. As an eight- or nine-year-old, she and her sisters Carmelita and Erna were bundled off to the newly built Joseph Stone Auditorium in Athlone, where the Eoan School of Performing Arts had their headquarters. Natalie liked her daughters to be more ladylike. Ballet was part of her image of what young women should be.

Desiree’s image of herself wasn’t quite like that. She gave ballet a try but when it reached the stage where little wooden blocks were placed in the ballet shoes to help the girls to stand on tip-toes, she, well, put her foot down. Standing on tip-toes was silly. And painful. Who stood on tip-toes anyway? The sports she knew didn’t require any standing on tip-toes. The only time she could think of needing tip-toes was when she was reaching up to look for something on top of one of her cupboards. Desiree could be headstrong when she put her mind to something. After that, under no circumstances could she be persuaded back to ballet. It was over. She was off to Salt River High and that was just that.

Ballet paled beside the breathless, sweaty excitement of street soccer, the thunder on the tar. She and her mates, a dynamic group that sometimes involved her cousins, sometimes not, played endless matches of street soccer on the roads between Albert Road and Salt River Station, Westminster Road, Portland Road and Foundry Road.

Matches were patiently waited