As the Premier Leagues (PSL)’s coming-of-age season kicks off tonight, the man who leads the country’s elite soccer sits content in the knowledge they’ve achieved what they set out to 21 years ago.
Irvin Khoza, the PSL Chairman, said yesterday that he believes the PSL has fulfilled all and more of the dreams he and his fellow club owners had back in 1996, and more.
“Back then, the SA Breweries wanted to be convinced that we were going to bring about something different,” he said of the institution that sponsored professional football then and for a few seasons into the new era via its brand Castle. “After all, they couldn’t see what was new except the new logo. Because it was the same administration, the same teams and the same players but there we were telling them to continue backing us in this new PSL.”
But Khoza and Co were intent on bringing full professionalism to the local game and today he says he is pleased they did exactly that.
“Our league is among the best in the world administratively and financially we are very sound. We have a very competitive league now where no result can be easily predicted.”
But it took some doing to get to here, where the PSL’s elite league club receive monthly grants of R1.5m, knockout competitions are always sponsored to the tunes of millions, there are quarterly incentives for teams to do weill in the form of the Q-Innovation, the league has one of the biggest television deals (with SuperSport) on the continent and there’s also a vibrant reserve league.
“And this is what we sat out to achieve. So it is now pleasing to see the unpredictability of the PSL because everyone is competing at the same level. When we have the promotional play-offs, we see the NFD competing and sometimes even beating the PSL sides. These days, the Top 8 is no longer the preserve of the older and more established teams and this season we have Chippa United competing in the MTN8. To me that’s progress, to see Chippa achieving what their owner Chippa Mpengesi predicted shortly after getting into the top league.”
The fact that PSL clubs no longer just have academies but have proper reserve league teams that play in regular competition is another achievement that gives the chairman great satisfaction.
“Without game time and regular competition a football team is as good as doing nothing. So the MDC (Multichoice Diski Challenge) has really helped our clubs because the teams can now measure their players’ readiness for the top league. We’ve had a lot of players in different clubs promoted from the MDC and that can only be a positive for us.” - The Star