ACES WILL MOVE TO THE CAPE AFTER ALL
No clause stopping relocation, says Comitis
JOHN Comitis says there is no clause in his purchase of Mpumalanga Black Aces that states he can’t relocate the club to Cape Town, he told Sowetan yesterday.
The worst kept secret in SA football was finally revealed this week when Aces owners Mario and George Morfou confirmed they had sold the club to a consortium fronted by ex-Ajax Cape Town shareholder Comitis.
The latter makes a return to domestic football ownership after he cashed out of the Urban Warriors in 2013.
The Morfous say they have decided to sell to free up both their time and financial resources to expand the family business, Lakama, having previously tried to off-load the franchise to AmaZulu last year in a move that was blocked by the Premier Soccer League.
Comitis is noncommittal on whether he will relocate the club to Cape Town, while the Morfous clouded the issue with the release of two statements on the sale on Monday.
In the first they said: “…One of those conditions was that he [Comitis] must consider remaining in the Mpumalanga province.”
The word “consider” is crucial to that sentence, though the second statement was more emphatic, saying: “We have made it a condition that the club remains in Mpumalanga.”
The Morfous could not be reached for comment, but Comitis refutes that such a condition exists.
“It was not a condition, it was a request that I should try keep it [the club] there,” Comitis said from New York.
“I will have a press launch when I’m back in South Africa next week.”
It means that Black Aces could be playing in Cape Town from as early as next season if the PSL grants a relocation request.
They would not be the first club to move across the country.
Maritzburg United owner Farook Kadodia purchased the franchise of Tembisa Classic in 2005 and moved to the KwaZulu-Natal midlands.
Black Aces themselves were relocated from Polokwane when the Morfou family bought the franchise of then National First Division (NFD) side City Pillars in 2007.
Polokwane City bought the franchise of then NFD side Bay United in 2010 and moved the club from Port Elizabeth to Limpopo.