Khoza hopes to settle Chiefs matter by Tuesday

Premier Soccer League (PSL) chairman Irvin Khoza has confirmed that the matter of Kaizer Chiefs’ failure to honour two of their fixtures earlier this month is being dealt with at executive committee level. 

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Amakhosi caused a ruckus when they announced they could not host Cape Town City on December 4, and three days later also could not make their game against Golden Arrows in Durban. 

This was due to an unprecedented Covid-19 outbreak that reportedly left 36 members of the Amakhosi team unavailable for games after testing positive and having to quarantine.

“It is not an easy matter,” said Khoza on Monday, referring to the Chiefs matter. “It was dealt with by the football department and was later escalated to the Exco. It requires a lot of attention to detail to ensure that the adjudication on this matter must be seen to have been given a thorough process and evaluation because it talks about issues that are very important.

“We are a rules based organisation. Everything is easy because you just refer to the rules and the compliance manual for answers but there are situations that occur in our normal lives that require us to apply our minds especially on a matter that has got debates on lives and livelihoods.

“At this point in time, I can say that we have convened meetings,  I think we have had four and the fifth is tomorrow.

“We had meetings before and referred the matter back to the office to deal with issues that were raised… The meeting is here at the PSL at 11am tomorrow, whether it is going to be a final day to adjudicate will depend on facts in front of us as the executive committee.” 

Khoza promised that the interests of all 32 member clubs will be considered when they deliberate on the matter.  

“And just to put this thing to rest it is important and urgent… Everything we do, we do for the interest of all the teams of the PSL. But taking into account the issues of sporting integrity, the issues of reputational management, stakeholders… There are so many things that we have to evaluate in matters of such nature. 

‘But our clubs come first. When we apply our mind, we apply our mind equally therefore it is important that we do not keep the clubs hanging and waiting.”