Make referees professional

Match officiating in the Premier Soccer League (PSL) is appalling to say the least and a lot needs to be done to get it up to the level it needs to be. This is not about getting the much talked about Video Assistant Referee ( VAR), it’s about match officials getting basic decisions correct and managing matches up to the required level of professional football.

This is a topic that comes up every season, but by the look of things nothing seems to be improving.

Since the formation of the PSL in August 1996, South African football has made great strides towards professionalism. Before 1996, most players, coaches, and to a certain extent administrators, were semi-professionals.

Players used to have day jobs and then report for training after a day’s work – which was a normal thing to do.

Bafana Bafana goalkeeper Andre Arendse used to work at Old Mutual while his national team captain Steve Komphela was a schoolteacher. And after a long day at work, they would head to training and then matches on weekends. Every semi-professional had to go through this.

And this, of course, had an impact in how teams prepared for matches let alone preseason training camps which were not as sophisticated as they are today.

But since the League became professional, players are now fulltime dedicated professionals and the game itself is a lot more professional than it used to be. It’s also played at a much faster pace than before.

Notwithstanding challenges; but from broadcasting to how things are run in the office, we can all proudly say that our league is one of the most professional domestic competitions in the world.

But there is one problem: the standard of officiating is still the same level it was before, if not getting worse. PSL matches are played by fulltime professionals, with fulltime coaches, and yet is officiated by semi-professional referees who have day jobs and spend less time preparing for matches.

When watching a PSL match, it doesn’t take a genius to see that match officials are not fulltime professionals.

When FIFA were selecting match officials for the 2018 World Cup played in Russia – assistant referee Zakhele Siwela was the only South African that made the panel. That in itself was a disgrace for a country that hosted the World Cup just eight years before.

It’s about time SAFA and the PSL figure out a way of turning match officials into professionals so that they can get up to the same level as their international counterparts.

Most players play until 34-36 before they retire and the advantage match officials have is that they can remain in their profession until the age of 47, when they are required to hang up their whistle.

Af After retiring ii some can remain as match commissioners and others make a transition to the private sector.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, match officials were exposed to a lot of physical and theory training which helped them improve as they were monitored in group settings.

But since the pandemic, SAFA officials are getting individual training programs to bring their match officials up to speed with fitness and match preparations.

Referees don’t train together anymore and all these factors are contributing to the poor match officiating we have seen.

Until there is the will to change things, many years from now we will still be complaining about the same problems we are witnessing today.

The Editor, Zola Doda