Nearly 30 years ago, while South African sporting life was still the victim of apartheid, the cosmopolitan city of Toronto offered the country's best footballers the rare chance to play together.

Toronto Blizzard of the North American Soccer League (NASL) assembled a team that included the two best black South African players of their generation – midfielder Patrick (Ace) Ntsoelengoe and striker Ephraim Matsilela (Jomo) Sono – as well as two of the top white South African players, strikers David Byrne and Neill Roberts.

South Africa were an international pariah at the time, banned in 1962 by FIFA and only reinstated in 1992, and so the four South Africans – who played on different club teams in their homeland – played together only in Toronto.

A break nearly came in 1974 when South Africa organised a tournament involving the four races that apartheid kept separate. In the event, a Black South African XI played a White South African XI – Sono, Ntsoelengoe and Roberts played in the match – before a sell-out 30,000 crowd in Johannesburg. But plans for a mixed-race South African team to play Australia on their way back home after the 1974 World Cup were nixed by FIFA.

While Byrne and Roberts were excellent players with impressive careers in the NASL, Ntsoelengoe and Sono were a class apart.

Sono was a striker with creative flair, power and an eye for goal who began his career with South African club, Orlando Pirates. He once scored four goals for a South African select side in a 5-0 rout of a touring team of former Argentinian internationals that included 1966 World Cup captain Antonio Rattin. Sono scored 22 goals in 57 appearances over three seasons in Toronto.

Italian powerhouse Juventus came in for him, but the Blizzard refused to let him go to Serie A. Returning home for good in 1982, he purchased Johannesburg's Highlands Park club, re-naming it Jomo's Cosmos after the New York team, for which he played in 1977.

Sono was caretaker coach of the South African national squad at the 1998 African Nations Cup in Burkina Faso and the 2002 World Cup in Japan/South Korea. Now 54, Sono and former French national team and Liverpool boss Gerard Houillier have been retained by FIFA to write the technical report for the 2010 World Cup.

Ntsoelengoe, widely admired for his skill, intelligence and bravery in midfield, played in the NASL for 11 seasons, and ranks among the league's all-time leaders in games played, goals scored and "assists".

In South Africa, he played for South African glamour club Kaizer Chiefs, founded by legendary player Kaizer Motaung in 1970, and now the home of current South African star Siphiwe Tshabalala.

Ntsoelengoe's former coach with Chiefs, Eddie Lewis, has compared him favourably with Brazilian star Ronaldinho, while Clive Barker – who coached Bafana Bafana to victory in the 1996 African Nations Cup – ranks Ntsoelengoe as the equal of Zinedine Zidane.

Clyde Best played with Sono and Ntsoelengoe in the 1982 Toronto side, and remembers them fondly. "They were both exceptional," says the former West Ham United and Feyenoord striker. "I was just telling someone what a shame it was that they never got to play in the World Cup because nobody got the chance to see how good they really were.

"Ace was naturally gifted – he could do things with the ball that other players couldn't do. Jomo had it all – good technique, good touch, good temperament. They would both be big money players today, they would probably be playing in the Premiership. I am sure Ace was up top looking down on his fellow South Africans and wishing them well in the World Cup."

Ntsoelengoe had just finished a coaching session with the youth team of his beloved Chiefs when he suffered a heart attack and died on 8 May 2006. He was 54. In October, 2008, Ntsoelengoe was posthumously awarded the Order of Ikhamanga, South Africa's highest honour for people who excel in arts, culture, literature, music, journalism, and sport.

Soon thereafter, his widow, Thato, set up the Patrick Ace Ntsoelengoe Foundation (PANF) to help disadvantaged children by combining sports and education. PANF supports some 22 primary school teams, and 18 high school teams, in the poor townships and rural areas surrounding Johannesburg, providing them with soccer boots, and full strips. The winning schools in a recent tournament were given laptop computers and projectors. The tournament MVP was given 1,000 rand (approximately $130) so that he could open a bank account.

"For some of the kids on our teams, it is the first time that they have played soccer in proper boots," Thato said yesterday. "More than that, the programme assists these kids by taking them away from the problems on the streets like doing drugs, and teenage pregnancy. Another of our objectives is to assist government in its mission to reduce the incidence of HIV in youth, a problem largely caused by poverty and unemployment."

Already, the PANF soccer programme is paying dividends. The 2008 tournament MVP, Mesh Khota, has joined Kaizer Chiefs, Ace's old team in the South African Premier League.

"I think Ace would be pleased," says Thato, who met her late husband in 1992 and married him two years later. "He treated the kids in the Kaizer Chiefs development programme like his own. He always got phone calls from the boys at awkward times – they were crying, complaining, or asking for advice. I could hear the way he responded to them as a father figure. At his funeral, mourners were touched by the reactions of these kids – some were crying, and some even fainted."

Thato has plans for a soccer academy, museum and high performance centre in Randfontein, a gold mining town some 30 miles from Johannesburg. She has secured donated land for the project, and is now knocking on corporate doors in an effort to raise the 75 million rand (approximately $10 million) required to fund the initiative.

The fall of apartheid came a generation too late to allow Ace, Jomo, and other top players, to represent South Africa in a World Cup. But thanks to the work of Thato Ntsoelengoe, and others working in youth development, today's young players will be given every opportunity to do just that.

Veteran World Cup observer Duncan Hall is reporting exclusively from South Africa for The Royal Gazette.