‘I almost bought axed Stars’
Sukazi now owns NFD’s TS Galaxy
Football agent Tim Sukazi has revealed how he came close to owning a PSL team but missed out on the opportunity.
Sowetan can today confirm that Sukazi – new owner of NFD side TS Galaxy after buying Cape Town All Stars – could in fact have been in charge of Platinum Stars during their days in the PSL.
Royal Bafokeng Holdings [RBH] announced in January that they sold Dikwena to a four-man consortium led by Roger de Sa, who doubled-up as coach. Sukazi revealed yesterday that he had agreed to the R22-million asking fee from RBH, but the deal fell through after both parties failed to agree on certain terms. “We were one of the bidders,” Sukazi confirmed.
“No one knew about it. We had endless meetings with Platinum Stars and it looked like we were going to have it, but where we differed was that I didn’t want to buy subject to some conditions.
“They didn’t want any condition. They wanted their R22-million upfront, boom! I wanted a condition [to pay a specific amount] and if they got relegated, there would be nothing more,” he explained.
Suggestions have been made that Sukazi probably made a lot of money over the years as an agent to afford to buy an NFD team, which is thought to cost anything from R8-million to R10-million.
Sukazi, though, dismissed such claims as “nonsense”.
“I’m a lawyer. I run a law firm [Tim Sukazi Incorporated]. I command 23 lawyers under my stewardship. We run a proper business and we are one of a handful of commercial law firms in Sandton [Johannesburg],” he retorted.
Sukazi said he spent between R120 000 and R250 000 monthly to run Galaxy when it was in the ABC Motsepe League. Sukazi said he would retain the ABC Motsepe team for development purposes.