So, the 2022/23 Premier Soccer League season is over, weeks before the serious football leagues in the world wrap up their campaigns. But there are no surprises.
We’ve witnessed Mamelodi Sundowns dominate this league for the past six years with very few teams coming close to matching them. What is different this time around, is that they needed only 23 out 30 games to claim their latest title and they won it on the day they were not even on the playing field.
It was Sundowns’ Tshwane rivals, SuperSport United, who delivered the latest crown by failing to win their last league match against Chippa United at the weekend.
What does this say about our football standards, if we still have any? The answer may be somewhere in numerous comments the Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos has made about Soweto giants, Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates, the two teams everyone expects to be challenging Sundowns.
The impotency of these two teams worries Broos a lot as their struggles are not helping to strengthening SA’s senior national team. “When you have many players from the same team, it means you don’t find the same quality elsewhere and that is not good for South African football,” Broos said last month after announcing the team to face Liberia in a 2023 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier.
Eight Sundowns players were in Broos’s 23-man Bafana squad for the back-to-back matches against Liberia last month. Even with that there were some, including this writer, who felt there were two more Sundowns players, Neo Maema and Khuliso Mudau,who deserved to be in that Bafana squad. Perhaps Broos felt ashamed to select 10 players from one team, but some of us would have understood his reasoning, given the gap between Sundowns and the other PSL teams.
Goalkeeper and Bafana skipper Ronwen Williams, Thapelo Morena, Aubrey Modiba, Grant Kekana, Mothobi Mvala, Teboho Mokoena, Themba Zwane and exciting Cassius Mailula were in that squad, while Chiefs, a team that used to dominate Bafana squads, had none.
I was looking at the last five league championships Sundowns won. Before it used to be three points difference but today is about 17 and 20 points. This is not good. Let’s hope Chiefs and Pirates will be back as top teams as soon as possible, to fight Sundowns for the championship.
— Hugo Broos, Bafana head coach
Broos called up Innocent Maela, Nkosinathi Sibisi and Monnapule Saleng from Pirates and added Zakhele Lepasa, another Pirates player who is on loan at SuperSport United.
“It is not good that we don’t have players from top teams like Chiefs and Pirates. Chiefs have been struggling. They are a little bit better now, but they are not like the Chiefs of old.
“Pirates are the same, they get a good result this week and a week later is not good, so they are also not stable. I was looking at the last five league championships Sundowns won. Before it used to be three points difference, but today is about 17 and 20 points. This is not good. Let’s hope Chiefs and Pirates will be back as top teams as soon as possible, to fight Sundowns for the championship.”
Once we have at least three or four teams competing against Sundowns in the PSL, Bafana will be much stronger. What’s helping, at the moment, is the experience Sundowns players are getting every season in the Caf Champions League, where they’ve never missed qualifying for the group stages since winning the competition in 2016.
But as I’ve said before, a weaker PSL doesn’t help in prepare Sundowns for the business end of the Champions League either. Since 2016, Sundowns have failed to reach the final of the Champions League, despite finishing on top of their groups many times before the start of the knockout stages.
What we’ve seen this season, and how it ended, should worry us all. You have a team that doesn’t just win the league with two matches to go, but instead it’s seven. That’s very poor by any standards. But what should bother us the most, is what next? Can Sundowns win the league with 10 matches to go next season? Judging by what we’ve seen no-one can rule that out.
The teams who are supposed to be chasing Sundowns, Pirates, Chiefs and SuperSport, are still in a dogfight for that lucrative second spot which includes a Champions League spot alongside Sundowns next season.
The standard of the PSL is also a big reason South Africa does not have players in big European leagues — another factor that would bolster a Bafana team. Only when we have league with clubs that compete pound for pound with Sundowns, will serious scouts be attracted to the PSL.
But Sundowns dominance in the PSL is nothing new. If you look at the list of Premiership winners, you’ll see that Sundowns have won it 13 times, which is half the time the PSL has existed. Only six (Pirates (4), Chiefs (4), SuperSport (3) and three now defunct teams, Bidvest Wits (1), Santos (1) and Manning Rangers (1), have also won this gong.
Broos’s current problems are nothing new for a Bafana coach. But it’s been getting worse every season. Let's hope the other 15 PSL clubs are too embarrassed to let the status quo continue. For our sanity we also hope for a better competition.
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