‘Officials are killing our game’

IN THE past few years I have noticed a distinct downturn in enthusiasm from senior players and coaches in the local amateur leagues.

The senior Premier League is the highest amateur league, and is a vital part of the South African football pyramid and an important stepping stone for the development of any player hoping to make it into the top leagues.

In years gone by this league produced some of the top players the country has seen, and all professional clubs used this league as their “scouting nursery” for budding new stars.

However, while in the not-so-distant past there were clubs with solid structures, nowadays there are mostly oneman-band teams with no reserve teams, and most of them without any junior teams, either. There are no community links any more. Several well-established clubs have even been struggling to field senior first teams because of the apathy among players.

A major contributor to this negative situation is that there are two different Safa’s operating in KwaZulu-Natal. This infighting has been going on for more than four years now and is a disgrace to South African sport and for those running football.

This situation is a very poor reflection on all the leadership in our football who have allowed this to carry on for so long.

It is understood that this division is driven from the highest echelons within Safa in Gauteng, but surely those involved at ground level here in KZN should shoulder most of the responsibility for this mismanagement of our football.

What do these administrators stand to gain by all this posturing for power? Is it to secure their own positions within Safa? They all tend to forget that, as administrators, they have been elected by the clubs to serve the clubs, and not their own interests. They also forget that they should be there to run football for the right reasons, as per Safa’s constitution, which is for the benefit of all who take part in the game.

In these four years of division within Safa there has been court case after court case, and none of the judgments have been respected. There may be no end to these court cases, and the struggle continues.

As we look forward to a new season next year, it appears most likely that this split in the leagues will continue and another season of fighting for venues etc will be the norm. There is no doubt that many senior footballers have lost interest in playing the game, and while the Safa split is a major contributor to this, another factor is that there are no real incentives to end up top because that would mean promotion to the higher leagues. Teams winning leagues in most cases refuse to take the promotion option.

It is common knowledge that the Castle, Vodacom and ABC Motsepe Leagues are, in general, corrupt and only the teams that have more money win their way through the play-off stages and therefore promotion. Many might brush off the senior amateur leagues as not that important in the general scheme of things, but they do so at their own peril.

Football is dying a slow death, and it is happening before our eyes. The sad thing is that at junior level – at least until the age of 13 – the game is thriving like never before. There is so much enthusiasm, and the talent we have is incredible.

However, most of those kids will be lost to the game long before they can even think about reaching their full potential.

Then we wonder why Bafana Bafana is the laughing stock of football.

Coppola is a football coach, administrator and former professional player