Black Label Cup given a poor response

Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates may be elated at renewing the contract for the Carling Black Label Cup but it seems the feeling doesn’t resonate with some of their fans.

A scathing social media campaign was launched by supporters immediately after the news broke. Fans were calling for a boycott of the cup under the #BoycottCarlingCup which was a call to not buy tickets nor vote.

The campaign looks to have failed as Computicket listed the tickets for the July 29 match as being sold out yesterday afternoon.

With the lukewarm performance of the Soweto giants in recent seasons, fans have said they miss the days of the Charity Cup because it was “more entertaining” than the Soweto Derby Black Label Cup which they say has buried the excitement of pre-season football in the dust of goalless draws.

“People will always complain about the Soweto Derby, but when the day comes Chiefs and Pirates fans will fill the stadium because they like the teams. We are all complaining about the performance. It is not the way Pirates perform but at the end of the day we will support the team,” said Pirates fan Dejan Miladinovic.

“We don’t have a problem with the Carling Black Label Cup we just want to have more teams in the cup tournament like the format of the Charity Cup. Have Pirates Chiefs and two other teams,” he added.

It is not every day that Chiefs and Pirates fans are on the same side, however both sets of fans agree on introducing two more teams to the tournament to inject life into it. Amakhosi fan Machaka Masilo sees the boycott as a way to voice their frustrations.

“Fans don’t have a platform to talk to management directly, so this is the only way they can do it. We need a pre-season tournament that can include more than just Pirates and Chiefs. We enjoyed watching such tournaments with fans from other teams. Chiefs and Pirates are too obvious, no one talks about it anymore. We don’t, having only two teams in the tournament takes the fun out of it,” said Machaka.

Over 6.3 million votes had been counted at 2pm yesterday with Chiefs’ goalkeeper Itumeleng Khune leading the votes with over 200 000 followed by Pirates striker Tendai Ndoro with 140 000 votes. Ndoro reportedly got 10 million votes last season by the time the match was played with Khune having a little over 12 million votes to his name at that time.