PSL remains determined
SOURCE: MOTHER BODY ACCUSED OF SCUPPERING PLANS TO RESTART GAME
Irvin Khoza and his PSL executive committee to meet on Thursday to discuss a way forward.
The Premier Soccer League (PSL) remain determined to get the 2019/20 season completed, with their executive committee, led by chairman Irvin Khoza, set to meet on Thursday to discuss a way forward.
A highly-placed source yesterday rubbished a South African Football Association (Safa) statement that no football could be played until the government had lifted lockdown restrictions to Level One.
Lockdown restrictions were only lifted to Level Four yesterday, under conditions that currently make playing football an impossibility.
The source also accused Safa of having a vested interest in the PSL not resuming. The PSL have compiled an extensive report of their own on how PSL football can be played in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, with the Exco to decide on Thursday when they will present their findings to government.
“We will finish the season,” said the source.
“The amount of work we have done with regulatory protocols took three weeks to finalise, then Safa do a one-pager that they copied off someone. Safa has no say. They want to look like they have a say. They don’t.”
“The intention (of Safa) is clear. They want us to lose sponsors. We will present our protocols to the government and they will decide when we can play. It (Safa’s report) is embarrassing to us as a nation.
“We have dealt with everything up to the players’ toenails, with contract extensions, with what happens if a player agrees (to an extension) or doesn’t.
“Ours is not a three-point plan where you tell players to wash hands, keep their distance and say you must sanitise change rooms.”
Safa released a statement on Thursday containing two reports from two medical experts that are actually a little more detailed, but that clearly does not satisfy the PSL.
The statement says Safa “will submit a full report to the world footballing body Fifa on the impact of Covid-19 on football in our country and when Safa believes it will be safe to resume football again.
The statement’s conclusion is that “as things stand, the two experts argue that football can only be played on Level One but still without spectators and that all clubs must have full-time sports doctors to manage the Covid-19 situation.”
The PSL have remained fundamentally silent since a March press conference to announced the indefinite postponement of the league and this has in part contributed to a gap being filled by Safa.
The Saturday Citizen’s source suggested Safa were deliberately trying to get all football in the country stopped so that an organisation in serious financial trouble already can ultimately declare bankruptcy.
“It is very simple – nothing will be better for Safa right now than a bankrupt Safa. They can justify it on the basis that the coronavirus has stuffed up (sic) Safa. In every federation and league across the world there are disputes, but they have one common interest – to come back and play as quickly as possible. We want to do our level best to finish the season, and if that goes beyond 30 June, so be it,” concluded the source.