NB La Masia FC are champions of the Gauteng ABC Motsepe League for the 2025/26 season, completing a campaign that doubles as one of the most fitting stories in South Africa’s third tier this year.
The title was sealed on Saturday, 2 May 2026 with the final league fixture against Dube Continental FC at Nike Center Stadium (kick-off 15:00). Despite the on-pitch celebrations, the club confirmed afterwards that no trophy handover took place at the venue — a small footnote that hasn’t dampened the emotion around what the win represents.
Same man. Same goal. Different role.
The result carries a poetic weight that very few clubs ever get to write. Back in 2021, when La Masia (then MM Platinum) won the same Gauteng stream and went on to clinch promotion at the National Playoffs, it was a Sebokeng-born winger named Tshidiso “Dona” Tukane who scored the goal that sent the club to the National First Division. He was the man who delivered them to the next level on the pitch.
Five years on, Tukane is the head coach — and he has just taken the same club, with the same colours, back to the same national playoff stage, this time wearing the tracksuit instead of the jersey. From scoring the decisive goal as a player to plotting the title campaign as a coach, the journey through La Masia has come full circle. Few in South African football can say they have led a single club back to the same promotion play-off in two completely different roles.
A title dedicated to the Late Pois and Toua
For all the symmetry of Tukane’s story, La Masia made it clear who this title is for first. The championship has been dedicated to the memory of Late Selwyn ‘Pois’ Adonis and Late Rashid ‘Toua’ Toffie — two figures whose names still carry across the club’s social channels and dressing room. The dedication framed the celebrations and reminded supporters that this was, above everything else, a championship for the people who built the project before lifting the trophy was ever in reach.
▎ “This win we dedicate to the Late Selwyn ‘Pois’ Adonis & Rashid ‘Toua’ Toffie — may their souls rest in peace.” — La Masia FC
What’s next: the National Playoffs
Winning the Gauteng stream is only the first half of the prize. La Masia now head into the SAFA Second Division National Playoffs, where the nine provincial stream champions will compete for promotion to the Motsepe Foundation Championship — South Africa’s second tier and one rung below the Betway Premiership. La Masia have done it before from this exact starting line, in 2021, with Tukane on the scoresheet. Now he gets to try and do it again — only this time, from the touchline.
Up the league, again. 🏆
