The cruelty of SA football! You go to bed with your loyalty attached to a particular club and by the time you wake up the next day it could well be all in smoke with absolutely nothing left of it but history.
The saddest part is to see these Premier Soccer League (PSL) outfits cease to exist without even giving notice to the clubs’ spiritual ancestors, the supporters.
And of course the dilemma the players face about their futures is immeasurable. I mean, imagine knowing that today you have a job at a particular firm, then without preparation or notice you’re told to pack up and go not just to a job next door but somewhere in another province.
“I’ll go to the garage and put petrol in for you. It’s my responsibility to provide transport to KZN. Of those who don’t have cars, please make sure you have a lift. No-one can stay behind and say they don’t have transport to go there.
The demise of Celtic comes 52 years after they were founded. It’s a club with a colourful history.
“The chairlady is waiting for you,” this is what the owner of now defunct Bloemfontein Celtic, Max Tshabalala, said to his players early this week as the sale of his club to KZN club Royal AM was confirmed.
The demise of Celtic comes 52 years after they were founded. It’s a club with a colourful history, winning their first ever trophy at Mainstay Cup 1985, still remembered by some as if it was played yesterday.
But all that history was gone last week when news started to filter in that the club, known as Siwelele and Masokolara to its legion of fans, had been sold to Royal AM owner Shauwn Mkhize.
Celtic’s sale comes just one season after Bidvest Wits were sold. Wits were just one year short of celebrating a century of existence, and such were their dire financial straits that not even one of their directors was prepared to at least give them one more season in the top flight.
Over the years there’s been a number of great clubs, campaigning both at the top and second tier side of our professional football, that have either ceased to exist or are now found in amateur leagues, where they’re trying hard to make a return to the big time.
Among them is Santos of Cape Town, Durban club Manning Rangers, the inaugural winners of the league title in the PSL era, Umtata Bush Bucks of the Eastern Cape and African Wanderers of Durban.
It’s now the turn of Celtic and Wits to suffer the same fate, but the critical questionfor those running the clubs is: how can they help the owners sustain their clubs? The club owners must also ask themselves critical questions about what they actually want in football.
These owners have to ask themselves if their involvement is for a few years of glory in the PSL, or if there is a long-term plan to make money through not only wins on their field of play but also through sponsorship and partnerships.
I quite like what the new owner of AmaZulu FC club Sandile Zungu has done since taking over the running of the Durban club last season.
From day one Zungu has been talking about the future, making it clear that by the time the club celebrates its century in 2032 he wants it to have won as many young fans as possible through what it does or wins on the field of play.
That process started well with the hiring of former Bafana Bafana striker Benni McCarthy as head coach. For the first time in their history AmaZulu will campaign in the Caf Champions League in the coming season having finished second on the DStv Premiership log last season.
But the rise of Usuthu did not start with the arrival of McCarthy. There’s been a lot of work in the club’s boardroom where partnerships with many companies have been sought and formed.
What AmaZulu have done is what all other so called small or middle clubs outside the top bracket should be doing – going out every day to seek financial backers so they avoid what happened to Wits and Celtic.
Even those running Royal AM, who may seem like they have deep pockets today, should start asking themselves how long they want to be in the elite league and what they need to do to remain there.
Without a sound plan for the future, I’m afraid we won’t get the end of buying and selling of statuses in the top flight.
This shouldn’t be the time to celebrate but to plan the club’s future and what it aims to achieve in the next 10 years, for instance.
Without a sound plan for the future, I’m afraid we won’t get the end of buying and selling of statuses in the top flight.
Speaking of how PSL clubs can sustain themselves, the managing director of Nielson Sports Africa, Jean Willers, told me last week that every PSL club needs a strong marketing department to get the sponsors.
“The (PSL) clubs probably do not understand the value of their brands, and the people that are potentially in charge are not marketers.
“They’re football people and so their skills and expertise are around players and putting the football club together and making sure that you’ve got the players to get to the match.
“These club owners are not thinking from an angle of how they make this club a vehicle for a sponsor to get its brand out to the nation and how do they grow their fanbase.”
Willers insisted the message should be about the future, not even what you can win on the football pitch tomorrow.
Club owners, especially of those smaller clubs that don’t have sponsors running to them like they may do for big clubs like Chiefs or Pirates, should go big in talking and doing something about their plans for 10, 20 or 30 years to come.
Without that assurance, we’ll continue to see potentially big brands such as Celtic disappearing.
“Cape Town City and AmaZulu have good marketing structures in place,” Willers said. “We need more PSL clubs in that kind of middle level that have a long-term vision. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter who is the club owner because the owners do this as a passion interest and after two or three years they lose the interest.”
Running a football club is not so much about the money you may have today but how you get more to sustain yourself.
Let’s hope Royal AM’s owners will have such a vision or they’ll see what they have today disappearing in a very short space of time, as happened with Tshabalala at Celtic.
Tshabalala had a big brand in his hands, probably fourth or fifth behind the big three in the PSL, but sadly he failed to master how to keep it going.
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