South African football icon, Steven Pienaar, says waking up earlier than he had ever done in his career to beat traffic before training at local side, Bidvest Wits, provided the final push in his decision to hang his boots.
Pienaar spent just under six months at Wits before parting ways with the club at the end of last year.
The former Bafana Bafana skipper announced his retirement Wednesday following a successful playing career, mostly spent in Europe.
“What I went through in the last five months tilted the bucket more towards me retiring,” Pienaar tells KickOff.com.
“I joined them in Cape Town for pre-season but when we came back in my second week I had already approached the coach and told him that ‘coach, I don’t think I can do this thing of waking up so early at seven in the morning to attend training.
“It is the first time in my career that I am waking up at 07h00 to go to training for a session that starts at 09h00’. He just said to me I will get used to it but at my age, I couldn’t put up with sitting in the car for an hour or an hour-and-a-half just to get to training. Every morning I was complaining and I just thought this is not how I want to spend my last year playing football.
“That was the point when I thought ‘I can’t be waking up at seven o’clock because I have never in my whole career woken up at seven o’clock’. Sometimes I would wake up half past six just to go to training for a nine o’clock session.”
Pienaar made 11 appearances in all competitions for Wits, before parting ways with the club at the end of December last.
“I wanted to finish in a nicer way than spending all my energy sitting in the car. So slowly that hunger (to play) was just going away and in the end, it just didn’t work out. However, I am grateful to the club (Wits) for giving me the opportunity to come back and play a few games in the PSL.”
Pienaar, who turns 36 this month, is arguably the Rainbow nation’s biggest export.
In a career which spanned two decades, he kitted for top sides like Everton, Tottenham, Ajax, Borussia Dortmund and Sunderland.
