Banyana coach Ellis asks government to help make pro women's football happen

South Africa needs a professional women’s football league, Banyana Banyana coach Desiree Ellis said after her team far from disgraced themselves bowing out of the 2023 Women’s World Cup last 16 with a 2-0 defeat to Netherlands on Sunday.

She said she hopes the government can intervene to urge corporates to put up more money for women's football. 

Banyana had their chances after Jill Roord headed a ninth-minute opener from a corner in the match that kicked off at 4am South African time at Sydney Football Stadium.

Three major setbacks — the first-half losses of Jermaine Seoposenwe (30th) and Bambanani Mbane (42nd) to injury, and goalkeeper Kaylin Swart allowing Lineth Beerensteyn’s second for Holland through her arms in the 64th — combined to take the game away from Banyana.

Ellis was asked if she hopes the South African Football Association (Safa) will support Banyana better after their excellent display in Australasia, so the Motsepe Foundation does not have to step in and assist financially to resolve disputes, as it did on the eve of the team’s departure.

“I don’t want to go into that but if I were to look even further than that I think we need a professional league,” the coach said.

“I think that’s absolutely essential. To have an amateur league back home and the players to come out and perform at this level against countries [whose players] play week in week out, month in month out against the top [club] teams in the world shows we have talent.

“We have urged everybody on the African continent to assist [starting pro leagues]. We had three out of four African countries qualify for the last 16.

“We know that whatever happened back home [in the dispute with Safa] should have happened much earlier and things would have been sorted. And I’m sure a lot of lessons were learnt from that.”

Safa launched a national women’s league — to go above the 144-team regional Sasol Women’s League — in 2019, which later received a sponsorship and became the Hollywoodbets Super League. Most teams remain amateur or at best semi-professional.

Ellis would like to see the national team players sponsored to the extent that they don’t have to work, and more money in the Super League so its clubs there can pay better salaries.

“To the sponsors, I don’t know how they can ignore something special like this, how they cannot assist in getting us to climb the ladder and be better.

“We still have players like Kaylin [Swart, Banyana’s goalkeeper] having a nine-to-five job and then having to go and train in the evening.

“For what this team has achieved I think the corporate world needs to stand up and be counted.

“Otherwise we’ll come back in four years’ time and go through the same thing, and everyone will say how well we played. Because we could have gone further.

“When I looked at how this World Cup was going, the possibility of us winning it was there, as it’s been there for everyone.

“So I urge the government to also step in and push corporates to come on board. Because it’s not just our senior team it’s our youth teams too — so what do you expect when they go to tournaments and they’re not prepared because of a lack of sponsors?”

Premier Soccer League clubs have also lagged in the global trend of establishing women's teams, with Mamelodi Sundowns — the three-time successive Super League champions — the notable example.