What happened to all the pre-season excitement in the top flight?
Top clubs like Manchester United have been travelling the world, they’ve beaten Liverpool in Bangkok, they’ve also been to Australia and won against hosts Melbourne Victory.
They played all these matches in front of capacity crowds.
Over here in South Africa, it’s a different story. Sure, we’ve been treated to some entertaining kasi flavour and some exciting amateur playoffs and junior tournaments while the professionals took off after a tough season.
But let’s be honest, people want to ultimately watch the PSL, but the clubs aren’t coming outside since they returned to pre-season training.
Are these players as good as everybody says they are? It’s all opinion right now until we see it.
Here we have Khanyiso Mayo at Cape Town City. He showed some real promise in his first season. Is the 23-year-old looking like he will kick on in the new campaign?
I don’t know whether it was intentional or not, but the SA football leadership has managed to wrestle football’s focus from the field to the boardrooms.
We’ve been seeing a bunch of sponsorship announcements with massive cash incentives thrown in to sweeten the deal even more.
But what are fans supposed to be excited about besides the money on offer in the upcoming season without seeing their teams in action?
Gone are the days when teams would be invited for pre-season action against the local clubs.
Man, even going to the kasi and playing there against LFA teams regularly would do.
Clubs used to do this, you can go back as far as Orlando Pirates visiting KwaLanga and playing a friendly against Bafana. Stories of Bra Shakes Mashaba jogging the streets of Langa and just hanging out with the locals. That was back in the 70s already.
Now you have to spend almost R200 just to catch a glimpse of a local football player in action. Clubs only come to eKasi for charity visits and mall activations. Okay clinics as well.
Now it’s considered an injury risk to play against amateur sides.
Just a few years ago this very city hosted English giants such as Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and even Manchester City.
We saw some of our favourite stars go toe-to-toe against the very top, if you’re old enough you would remember Thabo Mngomeni living up to his nickname “Nojikeleza” by running circles around Man City at Athlone Stadium.
I don’t care if you think it was a fluke or luck, but before Stellenbosch was famous for Stellenbosch FC, there was once a young Alcardo van Graan who scored an unforgettable backheel against Manchester United.
You will choose how you want to remember that, but whatever you feel or think, it’s nothing close to how Van Graan felt when he scored that in front of a packed Cape Town Stadium.
Some of our favourite local stars got their breakthroughs from pre-season matches.
And that’s the thing, pre-season is supposed to be a time clubs showcase their exciting players without all the pressure to really win at all cost.
It’s an opportunity for fans to have a good look at what their team is made of and sometimes that can help the fans align their expectations to those of the club.
At Cape Town City, for example, I would like to see new signing Marc van Heerden in action. I would also like to see how Darren Keet goes after a tough season recovering from injury. Who doesn’t want to see Gambia’s next big thing Kajally Drammeh finally do his thing for City? Will he be as good as the club’s other transfer steals Marques and Brice Ambina?
And what about Stellenbosch? They released a vrag players and has gone for some lowkey signings in Vusi Sibiya (defender) and Nhlanhla Mgaga (midfielder) a pair from Baroka as well as Sihle Nduli (midfielder) and Sinethemba Mngomezulu (winger) from TS Galaxy.
Lasse Sobiech, a defender from the German Bundesliga 2 was the big newsmaker.
There’s also William Luezi Likuta who I’d like to see.
The bottom line is that Mzansi’s football workforce really needs to do a better job with this period of the football season.