With the Castle Premiership all but wrapped up as Mamelodi Sundowns march on to back-to-back league titles, the real battle in South African football at the moment is in the promotion play-offs in the Mvela Golden League.
Looking at some of the clubs involved in the race to join the elite, one has to wonder whether there should be more stringent criteria imposed on who exactly can own football clubs in this country.
In the top flight, for example, Free State Stars have cruised to victory — and promotion — from the national First Division, but there is an almighty scrap going on behind them for the teams to finish second, third and fourth, and have a shot at winning premiership status.
Just by way of explanation, the clubs that end the regular campaign in those positions go into a post-season knockout tournament with the club that ends 15th — second from bottom — in the premiership, with the victor claiming a place amongst the elite for the next campaign.
But the irony is, two of favourites in the running this season are facing deep-rooted internal crises that question whether they will even be around next season to enjoy promotion should they win it. The crisis relates not to inferior playing staff or a poor technical team, but rather to the owners and their dubious actions.
Polokwane-based City Pillars have had their CEO, Peter Koutroulis, and head coach, Jacob Sakala, arrested on allegations of corruption, along with two match officials, as well as conspiring to “fix” the result of a game.
Anyone in the know will tell you that match-fixing is very much a part of South African football and an ongoing scourge, but the key is not to get caught. The police investigation dubbed “Operation Dribble” was a flop because it uncovered exactly who was involved in match-fixing, and if prosecutions were to go ahead, it would have taken out some of the top figures in the game and probably meant the collapse of association football in this country.
I can count on one hand the number of Castle Premiership chairpersons I believe not to have been involved in corruption — come to think of it, I’m not sure I need more than three fingers.
But at some stage someone, somewhere, needs to be made an example of, so these members of a First Division club and a few obscure match officials will no doubt receive heavy punishments if found guilty.
What that means is that Pillars will in all likelihood also receive a points sanction that — if severe enough — could not only take them out of the running for the promotion play-offs, but also throw them down into the relegation battle.
Another club in the mire is FC AK. At the start of this season, club boss Azizz Kara, a businessman with various interests (most seem to be in Liberia), forked out a huge amount of money on top players and administrators with the hope of winning promotion at the first attempt.
When it became clear that that would not happen through the automatic route of finishing first in the division, he appeared to lose interest and stopped paying players. The result was that the players went on strike, and only 10 out of the entire squad turned up at the ground for a recent match against Winners Park (which they lost 4-1).
The issue has still not been resolved and looks like going to the courts, but with the club just a point outside the promotion play-offs, Kara has decided to bring in more players on a game-by-game basis for one final push.
All this makes a mockery of the good work done by the Premier Soccer League (PSL), and in particular general manager Andrew Dipela, in improving the standard, on and off the field, of the once-ailing national First Division.
With clubs — especially in the lower leagues — changing hands on a regular basis, I believe the PSL needs to be stricter on who exactly can own a club. Financial guarantees and a “clean” business history are a must, but I believe prospective owners should be asked to provide at least a five-year blueprint on how they see that club progressing, and how they plan to get them there.
After all, the careers of players and their ability to provide for their families are at stake here, and we need to find a better calibre of club boss to ensure they are not let down by the petulance, greed or criminal intent of their bosses.
Nick Said is editor: special projects at Kick Off magazine