Relebohile Mofokeng - 21 - LW - Orlando Pirates

Small in stature but big in talent, Relebohile Mofokeng has 10 South Africa caps to his name but will be looking to make an impact on the biggest stage of all this summer at the World Cup.

Mofokeng is one of the young stars of South African football, and is enjoying a fantastic season in the top flight with Orlando Pirates. There’s been very few young players from South Africa who have made the move to Europe and been successful, but with a skillset like Mofokeng’s, someone may take a gamble on him.

In just under 600 minutes as a left-winger, Mofokeng has scored 3 and assisted 3. His productivity from that initial starting position has been tremendous, and he leads all players in so many key metrics, including my Player Impact metric.

Mofokeng’s data profile across all creative metrics is phenomenal, no left winger has more Expected Assists or created more chances than he has. He also ranks 1st for Successful Attacking Actions.

It therefore comes as no surprise to see his Position Profile point heavily toward creation. He still though offers a huge scoring threat too, and despite all of his attacking instincts, still racks up plenty of defensive actions too.

It’s going to be an interesting international break for Mofokeng, who as we can see from the above visual likes to do the majority of his attacking work in and around the box. Even when played as a left winger, he’s not someone who will hog the touchline, instead he wants to try and dictate the play in more central areas.

South Africa head coach Hugo Broos has already stated that Mofokeng will get playing time as a traditional Number 10 in this international break - as the national side look to see whether they can make the most of his talents ahead of the World Cup where they’ll take on Mexico, South Korea and the winner of the one of UEFA’s World Cup Playoffs.

Getting him in those central areas will put him in the positions where he does the most damage to the opposition. All but one of his open play shot assists this season have come from within the width of the box.

Mofokeng isn’t a prolific ball carrier, so for South Africa if they are to use him in an important role this summer they’ll need to make sure they surround him with the right supporting cast.

We can see from his Pitch Impact visual where Mofokeng has been most dangerous this season - it’s those left-central areas inside the final third. Although we’ve seen he can help out defensively, a lot of this work is related to ball recoveries rather than winning defensive duels, hence the patches of red inside his own half.

Clips & Highlights

A few weeks ago back in February Mofokeng put on a great performance for Orlando Pirates against Marumo Gallants, setting up one goal (with 5 other chances created), and scoring one himself too.

For his assist, notice how he waits for a team mate to drop deep before he continues to move across the field from his initial position on the left wing. His curved run behind the defence into loads of space is really intelligent, and it’s a relatively easy pass across the goal for him to make to help give his side the lead.

For his goal, Mofokeng shows great patience coming in from the left once again. He fakes the shot on multiple occasions to freeze defenders, before eventually dinking the ball into the top corner on the third ‘attempt’. He’s so confident with the ball at his feet and a very clever player, but of course as standards of defending increase he may not find things as easy as he does here.

When we look at him playing at a higher level (video below is every action made in the African Nations Cup Round of 16 match for South Africa against Cameroon in January), we see a player that at times is struggling a little with the far higher standard of play.

As the game went on - and as Cameroon were able to sit back more with an increasing lead - Mofokeng did find things more difficult in the game to create. He had one nice moment in the second half where he carried the ball well centrally toward the box, winning a free kick, but otherwise struggled to get involved in the second half before being substituted.

But despite that, there’s still some really positive moments there where he’s making good reverse or first time passes to fool defenders, in what was essentially the biggest game of his career. It’s why South Africa are looking to get the most out of him in this international break ahead of the World Cup - having someone with this much talent gives them a great chance of getting some positive results this summer.

Final Thoughts

As mentioned earlier on, there’s not really any form of pipeline of talent from South Africa to Europe - instead there’s been a few players in recent seasons that have actually made the move over to the MLS. Because of the lack of a track record in the league exporting talent, it does mean that transfer fees aren’t massive - the record fee for an Under-23 player is only €2.5m.

This would make a potential deal for a player like Mofokeng relatively low-risk in terms of outlay, which is why I think he would appeal to European teams in countries like Greece, Belgium & The Netherlands, as well as Scandinavian countries too.

Unfortunately, Mofokeng’s lack of size (he’s only around 5”5) means I think he would struggle at the highest level. I don’t think he’d ever be a fit for English football - but he does have undeniable talent and can definitely carve out a fine career for himself on a much bigger stage. He’ll be hopeful that this summer’s World Cup puts him in the shop window for a good move in 2026.