Bucs must heed lesson

The Premier Soccer League’s season kicks off officially tonight after an 11-week break, with the MTN8 quarterfinals. It will be a weird occasion as the competition, for the first time since the dawn of the Premiership era, doesn’t feature Orlando Pirates, who finished a distant 11th last season.

Pirates’ sorry decline over the past couple of years saddens us. It would be alarmist to suggest the once mighty Buccaneers may not bounce back from their current travails, but if the situation is not corrected, they might well struggle consistently to make the top eight.

Last week, club chairman Irvin Khoza made yet another coaching announcement – the fourth such appointment in a space of a year – with Serbian Milutin Sredojevic returning to the Bucs ship.

The man nicknamed Micho promised to take Pirates into calmer waters after a barren threeseason spell, but even the staunchest of Bucs supporters would know fixing the club cannot be the job of one man.

It will require patience, risk and bold decisions to return Pirates to glory days. The question is whether, unlike men before him such as Muhsin Ertugral and the recently departed Kjell Jonevret, Sredojevic would be afforded the chance to be his own man and implement his strategy.

Pirates must allow him to do so. The last thing SA football needs is another sad story akin to that of Moroka Swallows, who today are spoken of as “former giants” of the game. Their decline started when they made it a norm to constantly miss out on the top eight.