‘Are we trying to make people subscribe to watch games at home?’ – lambasts Mngqithi

Manqoba Mngqithi has waged a finger at the powers that be in South African football for keeping its gates locked for spectators, particularly in Premier Soccer League games. The last time there were spectators in the arena was when the league experimented with about 2000 fans in the MTN8 final close to five months ago. The Confederation of African Football has given the greenlight to spectators, but South Africa still grants permission to 2000 personnel in the stadium as Covid-19 has not yet subsided in the country.

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According to the latest statistics on sacoronavirus.co.za, Mzansi has vaccinated about 17 million fully vaccinated citizens and some 32.5 million doses have been issued. This for Mngqithi, is enough to restore the status quo to normality. Downs beat Al-Ahly in front of some 1500 onlookers at the FNB Stadium, and the Masandawana mentor questions why the powers that be are not increasing the number. He went on to suggest that broadcast giants Multichoice might be looking to benefit from the prolonged absence of spectators.

“As a country we have to give this thing a closer look. We just had an African Cup of Nations in Cameroon and if we really think that as a country we have rolled out a lot of vaccinations, and we are a bigger country than most of these countries in terms of development, then we should be a little bit more confident that we have more people vaccinated in our country. Because of that reason, we must show confidence and open the stadiums,” said Mngqithi.

“It is like we are trying to make sure that people subscribe to watch the games at home instead of making sure that the games are watched from the stadiums. The atmosphere was nice and we would love to have this kind of atmosphere in all our games. Other teams are suffering because they don’t have a sponsor and they rely on gate-takings. How long must they continue without any money coming in from the spectators? I think at this stage we are cheating ourselves

“If we can have people sitting in the main stand, what is the difference if we had the same thing happening on the other three stands? If there is still a risk, it means there was a risk with those supporters. There is no risk. When we went to Al-Ahly they opened for more than 5000 people but we opened  for 2000 people. The playing fields are not the same. We need that support in the Champions League and I also believe that even in the league, we need supporters. When you go to Egypt there are spectators and there were spectators in the Afcon but there are no spectators in South Africa,” he added.