The PSL loves to hog the spotlight for no reason
When the South African Football Association called the media to reemphasize their stance in regards to suspended the Premier Soccer League’s Absa Premiership and subsequently all of the other leagues in the country, I did not expect to hear any other party speaking because the ‘bosses’ have spoken.
PSL and Orlando Pirates chairman Irvin Khoza award a Kaizer Motaung with the Special Award (Photo by Lefty Shivambu / Gallo Images)
Effectively, the PSL were really supposed to just issue out a statement at the back of Safa’s decision to suspend all football games and not even bother to entertain the idea of playing behind closed doors – which is a thought that was irresponsibly fueled by sports minister Nathi Mthethwa.
The problem is that the PSL, by popular belief, it seems, does not really recognize Safa as the mother body of South African body. Instead of just complying with Safa’s suspension of the games and wait for a directive from them as how to proceed going forward, the PSL have decided to appoint a task team to look at scenarios which will report to the PSL’s executive committee, who will then report to the board of governors and they will decide on a date of resumption.
Now, this sounds like a viable option, but really, at what expense? At the expense of possibly spreading the virus which seems to go up with every sunrise? Is it worth the sacrifice? Yes, it is sad that there is not sports but if that translate to the well-being of the majority, and particularly for the athletes themselves, then there should be no hesitation or second thought should a need to suspend (or cancel) everything for the rest of the year – although that would mean most of us would be without jobs.
A culture that we should adopt is to the respect the hierarchy that exists in the structures that we subscribe to, in this case, football. It is clearly spelt out. Fifa is football’s world governing body, followed by regional confederations, in our case, we are led by the Confederation of African Football. They made pronouncements and suspended the premium club competition, the Champions League and its lower tier, the Confed’ Cup, while the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers were also paused among other junior national team qualifiers.
I feel the PSL should just sit back until there is a clear green light to go ahead because right now, the push to have the Absa Premiership and the Nedbank Cup concluded by June 30 might be far from realistic, given the development of the pandemic. President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a national state of disaster, for God’s sake!
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