JOHANNESBURG - The president of the South African Football Association (Safa), Danny Jordaan, hinted that there’ll be more than two Premiership clubs in the national women’s league that will be launched in 2019.
Bloemfontein Celtic and Mamelodi Sundowns are currently the only PSL clubs with women’s teams which guarantees them places in the league. Jordaan, after Celtic won the Sasol League National Championships for a second year in a row at Kabokweni Stadium on Saturday, elaborated on how the proposed women’s league will be structured.
“I think that first of all the quality of women’s football has increased tremendously,” Jordaan said. “If you look at the passes and the ability of each individual player, I think it sets us on the path where I think we will be ready to launch the national women’s league by 2019.
"I think that it will be a strong and exciting league Next year will be the last year of the Sasol League (as a stand-alone with the national league to be launched in 2019). The nine teams that will qualify for the play-offs of the Sasol League by winning their provincial leagues will automatically qualify for the national league. The PSL teams, Mamelodi Sundowns and Bloemfontein Celtic, will join those nine teams.
"There are other PSL teams that have indicated that they will start a women’s team to join that league. We will have a league of 16 teams made up of the nine provincial winners and the two PSL teams that currently exists. We still have space for another five. We will operate on a basis of first come first served.”
Jordaan revealed that the organisation will send a delegation to Spain to pick the brains of the La Liga administrators as part of their agreement that focuses on improving women’s football and launch an indoor football league by 2019.
While they work on the final proposal and the structure of the league, Safa will also look to finalise the issue of the Banyana Banyana coach. The senior women’s national team has been without a permanent coach for over a year since Vera Pauw vacated the position after the Olympic Games in Brazil in August 2016.
Desiree Ellis took over the job in the interim and guided the side to a fourth place finish in the Africa Women’s Cup of Nations in Cameroon and returned with gold medals from Zimbabwe at the Cosafa Cup. Ellis is among the candidates that they are looking at after they couldn’t secure their first choice.
“The issue of the national team coach should have been finalised Friday,” Jordaan said. “The technical team had a meeting on Tuesday. They will have a final meeting next week (this week) to finalise this matter because we play two matches against Sweden in Cape Town in January.
"After that we have to look at qualification for the Afcon and out of Afcon the top three teams will go to the World Cup in France. We must be in the top three. Therefore we have to sort everything out so that Banyana go to the World Cup for the first time.”