I've been following Major League Soccer (MLS) this past week, where Don Garber, the commissioner of the MLS, which is their version of a CEO, has been doing media rounds speaking about the MLS’ vision and strategy.
The PSL is as old as the MLS so it is fair to look at the MLS and think about why they have made such incredible strides.
He’s been speaking about their league plans to embrace legalised sports gambling and the league’s expansion plans amongst many things.
A topic that stuck out for me was how they plan to “become more of a selling league”.
This is a move away from their previous strategy where they were buying big-name players, most past their prime, to boost their league.
BIG NAME: David Beckham. PHOTO: SUPPLIED.
There’s a klomp ouens who’ve gone to US to earn their last big pay cheques. The most memorable is obviously David Beckham.
He said that the buying of big-name players has given the MLS and US players the exposure they wanted and needed.
Now that they've got what they wanted, they’re setting themselves a new challenge.
What does that have to do with SA football you ask? Well, remember Carlos Queiroz? Fresh from coaching the Portuguese Golden Generation, he was appointed the head coach of Bafana Bafana.
That’s how attractive the SA football project was at the time. Queiroz brought a study on youth development with him and called it the Q-Report.
He had plans to implement some of the ideas in the study and adapt it to SA football. We fired him when he was on the brink of qualification for the 2002 World Cup.
He had implemented the study in the US before coming to South Africa but they decided to call it Project 2010 there.
The US is great at marketing, but they were not nearly as exciting in their production of top young players.
That has changed since implementing Project 2010, which had a national team focus, and has led to each club setting up their own academies.
Top young players are now joining some of Europe’s top leagues. Taylor Booth, Alphonso Davies, Miguel Almiron, Chris Richards, Google these names!
INNOVATIVE: Carlos Queiroz. PHOTO: NOUSHAD THEKKAYIL/EPA.
Most of you know Christian Pulisic, you may also know Weston McKennie, also look out for Tim Weah, the son of George Weah.
These are just a few, there are many more all over Europe, they are all products of US development football.
They are all still under 21 but play regularly for their teams, some are key members of their teams even.
It’s painful to admit, but we continue to be left behind by those we’ve previously been ahead of.
Everyone else is getting better, while SA continues to instead look at their past achievements.
En nou, what are we going to do about our future? Are we going to continue to run our professional league without a full time CEO?
What is our professional football strategy? How does that fit in with the national football agenda?