Lesotho national team goalkeeper Sekhoane Moerane has been heavily linked with several of South Africa’s big guns after impressive displays for his country in the recent 2026 World Cup qualifiers as well as the COSAFA Cup that was held in Durban in July. The 26-year-old is the reigning Goalkeeper of the Season in his home country’s Vodacom Premier League and bagged the same accolade at this year’s edition of the COSAFA Cup, where his heroics helped the Mountain Kingdom country reach the final of the regional tournament for the first time in 23 years. In this interview with Soccer Laduma’s Mikia Kalati, Moerane discusses the reported interest in his services from the PSL, his admiration for a retired former Kaizer Chiefs goalkeeper and a current one, and more…
Mikia Kalati: Sekhoane, congrats on the big year you’ve had both at club and national levels with all the accolades you’ve won. First thing first, who is Sekhoane Moerane?
Sekhoane Moerane: I’m really humbled with the compliments. I think the accolades have come as a reward for the hard work I’ve been putting in at training at both club level and the national team. My journey with football started while growing up at Ha Paki in Mazenod, which is in the outskirts of Lesotho’s capital town, Maseru. That’s where the passion for the game developed playing with other boys in the dusty grounds of my village. We were just playing for fun until I joined the development ranks of my home team, Swallows FC, which is known for producing some of the best players to have played the game in Lesotho. I arrived there in 2008 playing as a right winger and I think at the age of 17, I switched to defence playing as a right back. It was during a winter tournament held in 2010 that I started playing as a goalkeeper as one of the teams did not have a goalkeeper and I volunteered to be between the sticks for them and did very well. After that tournament, when I returned to the Swallows development team, I was now playing as goalkeeper, but my coach in the development team was against me playing in goals. However, it didn’t take long before I was promoted to the Swallows first team competing in the second tier of Lesotho football and at that stage the team had a crisis as a far as the goalkeeping department was concerned. My coach at the development team was now in charge of the senior team, so he took me toplay in goals and I performed very well. He was a former goalkeeper himself and from that moment, I never played as an in-field player but focused on playing as a goalkeeper.
