SAZI HADEBE | Fans are back in full force, but the quality of football leaves a lot to be desired

It’s good to see local football fans back at Premier Soccer League (PSL) matches in their numbers in the first few weeks of the 2022/23 campaign.

What this clearly indicates is that the fans missed the vibe associated with being at the stadiums in the past two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

We’ve seen a couple of PSL matches sold out days or few hours before kickoff , especially those involving crowd pullers Kaizer Chiefs. Some PSL clubs, such as Cape Town City, have even taken advantage of this surge in crowd attendance by upping their ticket prices as high as R100, especially when Chiefs come to town.

It’s all good.

I wish I could say the same about the standard of football. It certainly doesn’t match the enthusiasm we’re seeing in the stands, and I will make a few examples to illustrate my point.

PSL matches don’t produce many goals to start with. For instance, the first week of the DStv Premiership round produced a paltry 10 goals out of eight matches. In that round, half of the 16 PSL teams didn’t score a goal.

The situation has slightly improved, with five-time successive league champions Mamelodi Sundowns leading in the scoring chart with 10 strikes in five league matches.

But that the team, Orlando Pirates, sitting on the top of the table after playing six league matches has scored only four goals is a clear indication that PSL clubs, including top guns such as Pirates, are simply not scoring enough.

Why is that the case? For all the “fast and furious” football we see in matches, the end result most often is a disappointing 0-0 draw for the cheering crowds. Out of 42 league matches played since Sundowns beat Cape Town City 2-0 in Cape Town in the opening round, a resounding eight matches have ended in goalless draws.

The way PSL strikers miss goals is similar to the mistakes that the defenders make, which means if it was not for error-prone defenders, most PSL clubs would struggle to score.

That’s a lot of 0-0 draws. But why are goals so important? Well, goals attract and keep crowds at the stadiums, and it’s no wonder the Premier League and Spanish La Liga are among the top leagues in the world, with almost every match packed to the rafters, week in week out.

Now let’s look at the sort of goals most teams score in the PSL and let’s take the past week’s four MTN8 quarterfinal matches as an example.

In the first match between City and AmaZulu FC in Cape Town, where Usuthu won 2-1 in extra time, two of the three goals were a result of mistakes by defenders.

The first one by AmaZulu’s Augustine Kwem was a gift from City skipper Thamsanqa Mkhize, who gave possession away in a danger area; the City equaliser came from an error by AmaZulu defender Abbubaker Mobara, who played Khanyisa Mayo onside instead of moving in sync with the other defenders to leave the striker offside. Only Usuthu’s winner by Lehlohonolo Majoro looked to be a goal that came from a good build-up.

The second match at the Chatsworth Stadium between Royal AM and Orlando Pirates, the Bucs goals, in a game they won 2-1, also came from the opposition’s defensive errors.

Royal AM winger Shaune Mogaila gifted Pirates the opening goal by Vincent Pule in the third minute after his pass was intercepted; Pirates’ second goal by right-back Thabiso Monyane was a mistake by Royal goalkeeper Xolani Ngcobo, who couldn’t hold on to a timid cross.

The least said about the Royal’s consolation goal, scored by Mogaila, the better. The player scored from a rebound, but he was clearly offside and got away with it because the referees failed to flag him.

The third match in Cape Town between Stellenbosch FC and Kaizer Chiefs produced two goals — all courtesy of defenders who simply couldn’t clear the ball from the danger zone.

It started with Chiefs’ Njabulo Ngcobo, who was easily dispossessed by Jaden Adams, and Adams fed the ball to Sihle Nduli to open the scoring; a horrible error by Stellenbosch defender Oswin Andries gave Ashley du Preez, a former Stellenbosch striker, an easy equaliser for Chiefs, who went on to win the match 4-3 on penalties.   

It was only in the Sundowns vs SuperSport United match that clear goals were created and neither team appeared to make unnecessary mistakes. Sundowns’ new players Marcelo Allende and Nasir Ahmed came from the bench to give the Brazilians a deserved 2-0 victory out of goals that were created late in the match.

Now when you take what I highlighted into consideration, and that it is Sundowns who create and score their chances, you see why we have so few goals in the league. A lot of teams simply lack creativity, most getting goals through defensive errors.

The highlight of the season so far is those goals we saw in the Chiefs/Stellenbosch match. But they didn’t start there and surely won’t end there.

A few weeks ago Sundowns managed to beat Chiefs 4-0 at Loftus in a league match. The first two of those four goals didn’t come from Sundowns’ creativity but were gifts from Chiefs defender Siyabonga Ngezana, who in the first goal scored by Gaston Sirino failed to pass the ball back to his goalkeeper.

This whole thing makes you wonder that without these mistakes by defenders and sometimes goalkeepers, how many goals we would see in PSL matches. This goes hand in hand with how our football standard has fallen, resulting in many big teams in Europe forgetting there are football players in SA.

The end result is of course a Bafana Bafana that can’t score goals. It all starts in our professional league where players lack the technique to score goals from good build-ups.

Many PSL teams do create chances, but they lack players with the basic technique to score. A lot of PSL players are missing sitters like the one we saw Zakhele Lepasa miss against Royal at the weekend, where he got more than one bite at the cherry to score but ended up missing.

The way PSL strikers miss goals is similar to the mistakes the defenders make, which means if it were not for error-prone defenders, most PSL clubs would struggle to score.

The pain of the lack of goals in the PSL is made worse by the fact those who actually score most goals in a season are not South Africans. In the past four seasons, only Bradley Grobler of SuperSport United (2020/21) has won the golden boot.

Mwape Musonda (Zambia, 2018/19); Gabadinho Mhango (Malawi, 2020/21); and Peter Shalulile (Namibia, 2019/20and 2021/22) have won the Lesley Manyathela’s Golden Boot award.  

That tells you why Bafana are ranked so low in the world (68) and on the continent (12). It all has to start in our local league. But for now our league has poorly prepared players — players who can’t score nor defend properly. That’s the sorry tale of our football. It’s such a pity for the paying fans.