MAHLATSE MPHAHLELE | Rayners should have been nominated for Footballer of the Season

End of season awards are by their nature highly divisive and the announcement of the nominees for last season’s best performers to compete for the top prizes in the PSL Awards was not going to avoid the storm. 

After the long wait, the Premier Soccer League (PSL) released their list of nominees on Tuesday and, as per script, the list has been met with strong and contrasting opinions. 

The list is long but sharp focus is on the main categories of the Footballer and Betway Premiership Players’ Player of the Season awards, where Mamelodi Sundowns striker Iqraam Rayners is conspicuous by his absence. 

There are those who agree with the coaches and players who voted for not including Rayners in those categories but there are those, like me, who strongly argue he should have been shortlisted. 

Footballer of the Season is judged by Betway Premiership coaches and the Players’ Player of the Season, as the title suggests, by fellow professionals. It is surprising many did not see Rayners as worthy of a nomination for the top awards, to be announced on July 29. 

Coaches and players have intimate knowledge of the league they take part in but there is nothing stopping supporters from disagreeing with the surprising choices they have made. 

Some will ask what the point is of this argument because Rayners has been pipped by teammate Lucas Ribeiro, Relebohile Mofokeng of Orlando Pirates and Sekhukhune United attacker Keletso Makgalwa for both categories.

Nothing is going to change the situation but this is a good point of discussion and it would be interesting to find out from those who did not vote for him, what motivated their decisions. 

From where I am sitting, it does not look like coaches and fellow players who voted for Ribeiro, Mofokeng and Makgalwa looked closely at Rayners’ impressive goal contributions. 

Rayners contributed 14 goals and nine assists in 26 matches for the Brazilians on their way to their eighth successive Premiership title, which is significantly better than Mofokeng (five goals and eight assists in 26 games) and Makgalwa (four goals and 11 assists in 26 matches). 

For those who don’t want to go with numbers, there is a strong footballing argument for Rayners that he was largely the front-line Sundowns attacker ahead of Peter Shalulile, Arthur Sales, Ribeiro (who usually played deeper) and Tashreeq Matthews. 

As part of coach Miguel Cardoso’s attacking plan, he was sometimes used as a forward decoy and this allowed Ribeiro, Sales and Matthews to threaten opposition defenders. 

The Footballer of the Season award, too, is decided across all PSL competitions, while the Players' Player award is for the Premiership. So Rayners not making the cut in the former is even more strange.

Rayners was instrumental in helping Downs reach the Carling Knockout final, where they lost 2-1 to Magesi FC in Bloemfontein, with a solid contribution of four goals in as many matches. 

Rayners — who also had Champions League and Bafana Bafana commitments, which is only relevant for this discussion in considering how it added to his workload — contributed 18 goals and nine assists after 33 matches in all PSL competitions.

That is notably is more than both Mofokeng and Makgalwa, which seems the major factor in Rayner's omission being so widely discussed. 

In my view, Ribeiro must be named the Footballer of the Season. He established himself as a significant cog in the Sundowns attack and his contribution of 17 goals and 12 assists from 34 matches in all competitions, often from a deeper role, set him apart as the best player in the country last campaign. 

There is a strong case for exciting Mofokeng because he scored crucial goals for Pirates, sometimes in the high-profile matches, though he did lack consistency in front of goal. 

For someone who plays in an advancing attacking role as a winger, No 10 or striker, Mofokeng’s return of only seven goals and 12 assists in 36 league and cup games is hardly world class. 

To be frank, Makgalwa’s statistical return in cup competitions was poor and he did not set the league alight with four goals and 11 assists in 26 appearances for a team that did not even finish in the top three. 

His case could have been enhanced if he helped Sekhukhune to a top three finish but they were pipped to the Confederation Cup by Stellenbosch FC and also did not make it to a cup final. 

If you look closely at Rayners’ goal contributions last season, they are better than Makgalwa and Mofokeng and it is disappointing that for some strange reason, some of the coaches and players were not impressed by his contribution.

In my view, he was the second-best player in the league after Ribeiro because of the influence he had for coach Cardoso and the dominant Sundowns who won the league convincingly. He played a role in many of Ribeiro's goals, and vice versa.

I have the respect for coaches and players, but I don't agree with them because Rayners was consistent and scored important goals for Sundowns and he deserved at least a nomination for his troubles.