Kaizer Chiefs and Ajax Cape Town made a statement of intent this week, in more ways than one. Both teams began the task of garnering points from the backlog of games they have to play by beating their opponents Golden Arrows and Jomo Cosmos respectively on Wednesday night.
If both these teams are able to turn games in hand into points they will ensure that the Castle Premiership championship is a two-horse race.
Currently Ajax Cape Town are number two on the log table with 38 points from 17 games, just two points behind log leaders Santos, who have played 21 games, while Chiefs are number three, with 36 points from 15 games.Â
Both the Gauteng and Cape teams are hungry to win the championship.Â
Kaizer Chiefs are looking to win the title for the first time since democracy dawned in the country.
Ajax Cape Town coach Gordon Igesund would want to make it his fourth championship title with four different clubs.
On Sunday Kaizer Chiefs will play Cosmos, while Ajax meet Supersport United, who broke their two-game losing streak by beating Hellenic 2-1, bringing them closer to relegation.
As the Premiership begins to hot up the Absa Cup will swing into action next week. It’s a tournament of dreams for the smaller division teams, but it presents the Premier Soccer League teams with a dilemma.Â
They have to decide whether to do their best to win the Cup and lose league points, thereby diminishing their chances of winning the championship and possibly putting them in line for relegation.Â
The Cup is lucrative — R1,5-million is on offer for the winners; the league offers a bigger prize of R2,2-million.
Interesting knockout games in this tournament will be Kaizer Chiefs versus Sundowns, Orlando Pirates versus Black Leopards (who recently appointed the former Bafana Bafana coach Ephraim ‘Shakes†Mashaba as their coach) and Ajax Cape Town versus Dynamos.