THE DISKI DOMAIN SPOTLIGHT / ORIGINAL FOOTAGE
MPHO “PHOPHO” PADIME: BEFORE THE PIRATES SHIRT
Daveyton, Kathorus Juventus, AT Mambas — and the skills that came before the Orlando Pirates breakthrough.
Watch the original footage ↓
DISKI DOMAIN ORIGINAL ↗01 / THE PHOPHO STORY
We were filming Phopho before the Pirates shirt
Go back to the 2024 Junior Khanye Top 8 in Daveyton and you'll find Mpho “Phopho” Padime doing what people now know him for: playing football with a lot of confidence and a lot of personality.
He was representing AmaTen10, and Diski Domain was there with the camera. We have the quick skills edit, but we also have a longer recording from the same tournament. Watch that one and you get more than a few seconds of tricks — you get a chance to see the player in the flow of the game.
At the time, it was another promising young footballer lighting up a local tournament. Looking at it after his rise to Orlando Pirates gives those clips a whole new meaning.
02 / THE PHOPHO STORY
Back in Daveyton, another shirt
Phopho appears in our footage again at the 2025 Junior Khanye Top 8, this time in the colours of Kathorus Juventus Academy.
A year separates the recordings, but there's something recognisable about him in both: the eagerness to get on the ball, try something and back himself to pull it off.
It's the kind of football that gets people talking around the pitch. Some come to see the result; others love the skills just as much. When a player can combine the two, he gets noticed.
What makes these videos special isn't that we knew exactly where he would end up. We didn't. It's that they show the football he was playing before the biggest clubs were part of the conversation.
03 / THE PHOPHO STORY
The AT Mambas chapter
There's another stop in the archive: AT Mambas, with footage filmed at D Ground in Palm Ridge.
We recorded Phopho's debut appearance for the club, including a longer widescreen version of the action, and we have footage from a different AT Mambas game as well.
A couple of these uploads were later given titles celebrating his Orlando Pirates breakthrough. That's the timing of the upload, not the match in the footage. The football you are watching is Phopho at AT Mambas, before the Pirates senior debut.
And that's worth getting right, because the earlier chapters are interesting enough without pretending they happened somewhere else.
Palm Ridge / AT Mambas
THE AT MAMBAS DEBUT
LONGER VERSION / SAME AT MAMBAS DEBUT
LONGER VERSION / SAME AT MAMBAS DEBUT — watch the original ↗
A DIFFERENT AT MAMBAS GAME
The debut was filmed at D Ground, Palm Ridge. The later Pirates-themed upload titles refer to his career breakthrough; these recordings show AT Mambas football.
04 / THE PHOPHO STORY
Then came Orlando Pirates
Phopho's football eventually took him to Orlando Pirates. The club's player profile traces his roots to Katlehong and Kathorus Juventus, and credits him with 10 goals and nine assists in the 2025/26 DStv Diski Challenge campaign.
Those numbers tell you he was doing more than entertaining people with skills. There was end product to go with the flair.
He joined the senior team's preparations, including the 2026 preseason tour to Spain, and on 29 August 2026 he made his Pirates first-team debut against Sekhukhune United in the MTN8 semi-finals.
Imagine the contrast: footage from Daveyton and Palm Ridge on one side, an Orlando Pirates debut on the other. Same player, very different stage.
05 / THE PHOPHO STORY
The skills are part of the story
Of course, Phopho's flair has followed him into the professional game, where every trick gets a bigger reaction and a lot more scrutiny.
Pirates coaches have spoken about finding the right balance between creativity and making the most of a footballing opportunity. That's a fair conversation. At the highest level, the skill has to help the team too.
But our footage is a reminder of where that confidence came from. There are years of local football behind those moments people now see on television.
Start with the 2024 AmaTen10 footage. Move on to Kathorus Juventus in 2025. Then watch his AT Mambas appearances. It's a great way to see an earlier version of a player who has since stepped onto one of South Africa's biggest stages.
Before the Pirates shirt, there was Phopho in the kasi game. And the cameras were rolling.
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