There are not many things that can damage the status of a professional football league more than the instability in coaching departments at the clubs.
When too many clubs make changes during a season, you can be assured the campaign has not been watchable and more teams have performed below the expected standard.
The 2022-23 season has been particularly difficult for many clubs in England’s Premier League, where as many as 13 have changed managers, three more than in any other campaign in the competition’s 31-year history. The situation in England is far different than in 1992-93, the Premier League’s first season, when only Ian Porterfield of Chelsea lost his job.
But still, what has happened in the Premier League is nowhere near the level of our Premier Soccer League (PSL), where Chippa United (four), Royal AM (three), Marumo Gallants (three) and AmaZulu (three) have had more than two coaches this season alone.
Where else in the world would you find nine out of 16 clubs sacking head coaches, some even more than once within a single season? Mind you, the current campaign is not yet over and more coaches could still lose their jobs within thefive remaining games.
It doesn’t help that the PSL has no rules to protect coaches from the impunity with which most PSL club bosses act when things go awry. Even champions Mamelodi Sundowns joined the circus this time around, with the change they made in their coaching set-up in October. At least with Sundowns their reinforcement worked like a charm because the promoted Rulani Mokwena went on to ensure that Masandawana won the championship for a record sixth time in a row, with a record seven matches still remaining.
I’ve said time and again that our league is a professional one in name only. Take for instance the owner of Chippa, Asiviwe Mpengesi, who is never one to be outdone when it comes to the PSL’s coaching merry-go-round that we witness every season. Mpengesi and some of his colleagues have chosen to entertain their fans by firing coaches (more) than the football they produce on the field of play.
The second biggest problem in the PSL are club chairmen who, in my opinion, are no different to football fans in the way they make decisions when it comes to their coaches.
No matter how you look at it, this tendency to make coaches scapegoats doesn’t help improve the standard of our football. In fact, the opposite happens. We should ask ourselvesif these coaches are so poor, why have some of them, like Brandon Truter (AmaZulu FC and Sekhukhune United) and John Maduka (Maritzburg United and Royal AM) been hired by two different clubs this season and obviously earned better results at their new clubs.
Romain Folz was removed from a head coaching position for the second time at a different club this season when AmaZulu owner Sandile Zungu decided last week to appoint him as his “adviser on technical matters”.
What seems to be fuelling this phenomenon is the PSL not having stringent rules on the hiring and firing of coaches by football clubs. In some top leagues in the world, La Liga in particular, a coach cannot manage two different clubs in a single season, meaning he can’t start a season at Barcelona and end it at Atletico Madrid.
Frank Lampard started the current season at Everton and may finish it at Chelsea (as a caretaker). So the Premier League, like the PSL, doesn’t mind coaches moving around the same clubs and league in a single season. That to me looks very untidy.
But the second biggest problem in the PSL are club chairmen who, in my opinion, are no different to football fans in the way they make decisions when it comes to their coaches. Again, the PSL should have a certain standard with which they expect club owners to act with regards to their coaches. Surely club bosses should have professional football advisers, preferably people who’ve handled some teams, preferably as coaches, at the highest level.
If Zungu and Mpengesi had that kind of technical advice, I’m sure they would not have made the several changes at their clubs this season. The only other club, other than Sundowns, that can justify the coaching change this season is Sekhukhune United, who let go of Kaitano Tembo early in the season and brought in Truter, who has managed to keep the Limpopo club in the top eight. Other than that, it’s been a mishmash of results with most teams, AmaZulu, Swallows FC, Chippa, Gallants and Maritzburg United, still ending the season fighting relegation despite the changes they’ve made.
Some credit should go to club bosses of smaller teams like TS Galaxy, Lamontville Golden Arrows and Stellenbosch FC, who’ve kept faith in their mentors despite indifferent results this season. That faith has been rewarded because all these clubs, despite not being assured of the top eight, are at least in a better position to avoid the axe.
The stability and winning progress we’ve seen at Sundowns can be only attributed to the little changes they’ve made to their technical team in the past 11 years. If club bosses like Mpengesi can look at that and arm themselves with people who understand the professional game, we’ll surely have a stable and watchable league. But with the PSL not interested in protecting the coaches, we can only expect the likes of Mpengesi to continue ruining the lives of many a coach.
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