Andrew Muchineripi soccer Football in South Africa has reached a worrying level when Sundowns have to give away tickets for an African Champions League match against Esperance in Pretoria on Saturday. One newspaper offered 200 tickets this week and another 100 to those who phoned and correctly answered a question, and I am reliably informed Sundowns gave both publications the tickets at no cost. In Egypt, Esperance would attract 100E000 fans to the International stadium. In Kinshasa, they would fill the 80E000-seat Martyrs stadium. In Pretoria, who knows? My fear is that the Brazilians, who play the most attractive football in the country, will be lucky to get 5 000 fans for a match of huge significance to their Champions League challenge. Esperance have a wonderful pedigree, being the only club to have won all the pan- African club competitions: Champions League, Cup Winners Cup, CAF Cup and Super Cup.
They had six players in the Tunisian squad that outclassed Gabon 4-2 in the African Nations Cup last weekend and three – Radhi Jaidi, Hassan Gabsi, Tarek Thabet – scored. Known as the Blood and Gold, they have dominated Tunisian football in recent years, winning one of the most competitive leagues on the continent three consecutive times.
In Brazilian Dos Santos Adailton (why do no good Brazilian footballers come to South Africa?) Esperance have a gem, a young striker capable of winning a match on his own.
So what more do South African supporters want? Do they, like the TV advertisement for a certain airline, want to be collected at their door and chauffeur-driven to Loftus?
Dwindling attendances have long been an issue on any realistic South African football agenda, without much constructive discussion as to how the illness can be cured.
Of course there are those who would have you and I believe there really is no problem, just the irresponsible media sensationalising again for want of something better to do. Well, if further proof was needed that the beautiful game is facing a crowd crisis in South Africa, it came with one almighty bang last Saturday evening at Ellis Park. The setting was perfect. World and European champions France were in town for the Nelson Mandela Challenge. Bafana Bafana were playing under new coach Carlos Queiroz for the first time. A capacity 60E000-plus crowd seemed inevitable. Alas, the stadium was only half-full (I’m trying to be positive and not write half-empty), leaving some to ponder on what might have happened had we won the 2006 World Cup bid. If a match between South Africa and France can lure just 34 000 people, what odds on fewer than 500 turning up for Japan versus Paraguay or Slovakia versus Australia? Pretty slender, I would say. Danny Jordaan, the extremely able South African Football Association (Safa) chief executive, confessed at the weekend that if the situation did not improve the country could forget about bidding again for the World Cup. Australia, which is not exactly seen as a soccer-crazy nation, attracted 98 000 for the Olympic Games final between Cameroon and Spain and is probably a more likely candidate to host the tournament in the not too distant future. Why are South Africans shunning soccer in increasing numbers? Economics obviously plays a part and here I must disagree with Jordaan when he said R50 a ticket was a bargain compared to R220 for an English Premiership game. That is true only up to a point because the average English football fan has much more disposable income than his South African counterpart and, as we witness each weekend, can easily afford to attend Premiership football. Live television – the France match was shown on SABC and DStv – may deter some fans, but there were at least 100 000 people inside FNB Stadium when we beat Congo in the World Cup qualifiers and that match was also screened live. Besides, broadcasting rights bring considerable cash into the Safa bank account, while it is doubtful if the Premier Soccer League could pay its 18 clubs more than R200 000 a month without television money. No, the problem runs much deeper than that. It has to do with (unjustified) security fears, with a lack of personalities, with a generally poor standard of play and virtually non-existent marketing, to name but a few problems. An indaba, involving all stakeholders, is clearly an urgent need because when Kaizer Chiefs draw fewer than 2 000 fans to a Premiership match, rain or no rain, something is radically wrong.
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