LIARS AND BUYERS: South African football slides in to chaos... even if Lesufi can find R55m by Friday

FOOTBALL'S MUGABE: Dr Irvin Khoza

WEEKS ago I said the PSL were getting in to awkward territory when they agreed to John Comitis buying Mpumalanga Black Aces while Panyaza Lesufi was publicly expressing his desire to buy a place for Moroka Swallows back in the top flight.

For the third time in a year, I produced FIFA and NSL documents showing that the “buying of promotion” was illegal in modern football, that it had been out-lawed since 2007.

But nobody listened. Comitis was allowed to demolish Aces, taking 14 of their players 1000 miles south to his new-fangled Cape Town City, while swapping coaches with Orlando Pirates.

Turk Muhsin Etrugral was grabbed by Khoza amid surprising levels of optimism from Bucca fans, Eric Tinkler was dispatched to Cape Town where, as far as I can tell, another eight players are still needed to complete a workable squad for the “boys in blue”, who plan to play their games on Friday nights in the Mother City.

All this in a tourist mecca that barely produces enough paying fans for one club, let alone a second one apparently constructed purely to under-mine Ajax Cape Town.

That was bad enough. What has happened with Free State Stars and Moroka Swallows’ powerful ANC MEC for Education Lesufi is sending South African football headlong in to chaos.

Eight days ago, after much huffing and puffing, Lesufi went on Metro FM with Robert Marawa and, though he would not say which club he had bought, the mighty Marawa assured us: “This deal is done.”

With Lesufi proclaiming The Birds were now owned by a “consortium of supporters”, we looked forward to “final authorisation” from the PSL last week with R55m promised to ease the pain of Free State Stars, who would duly buy an NFD franchise and play their way back to the top flight.

It was at that point, Orlando Pirates got involved. An agent was dispatched to Bethlehem even as Lesufi made his brave proclamations. Within 24 hours, Justice Chabalala, wanted by Kaizer Chiefs, Sello Japhta and the talented Ayanda Nkosi had all decamped for the Sea Robbers.

And Bradley Carnell, the former Bundesliga star who helped Stars sign up new French coach Denis Lavagne, suddenly found himself at a “big club” for the first time. We chatted about it, I’ve always rated Carnell... but the whole saga surprised us both.

A week later and, apart from a rabble-rousing meeting with Swallows fans on Sunday, nothing happened. No official announcement from the PSL. No word from Stars to their bemused fans, though they played in a local tournament over the weekend under Lavagne but without the trio who had left for Pirates.

And then Irvin Khoza, chairman of both Pirates and the PSL for over 20 years, called an emergency conference at the PSL to tell us NO DEAL, the money hadn’t been deposited, Lesufi has until Friday to come up with the cash or Free State Stars would be resurrected like a footballing Lazarus.

As a rambling, almost incoherent Khoza told us: "We hope that Ntate Lesufi is listening together with the people of the trust he's involved in.

"I want to appeal to MEC Lesufi that together with whoever he's involved with in the consortium to finalise this ASAP.

"If we we don't have clarity by the end of the week there will be no transaction, change of club or anything like that. There will be nothing for us to consider. Our position as the League, right now, is that we await a full report from the parties."

Khoza, who stands astride our football like a gold-toothed Robert Mugabe, rambled: "I spoke to Mr Lesufi and he apologised. I hope they will conclude it this week. Because we can't wait too long.

"We are dissappointed because they let the cat out of the bag prematurely. As it stands, no application has been made.

"If the intention of this trust is to buy the club and seek a name change, that is a matter to be dealt with when the time comes (Khoza claims the name Moroka Swallows had NEVER been mentioned).

Khoza went on to make similar contradictory, never-ending comments on Metro FM a couple of hours later, waxing lyrical about footballing traditions, and the pain caused to Free State Stars “players, officials and family”.

But of course, he was being economical with the truth. A deal HAD been done, and Khoza himself was part of that deal, as he immediately grabbed as many Stars staff as he could for free.

The only hitch? Lesufi failed to deposit the R55m, money that, for some reason, is linked to an agent called Francesco Ferreri, an Italian South African who has featured before without distinction as an agent involved at Moroka Swallows and named by sources in Zimbabwe during their recent match-fixing scandal.

I’d like to say such chaos is normal in the running of a football league, but it’s not. This goes way beyond Greek and Turkish footballing mayhem and in to the dark reaches of corruption and fraud.

Khoza knew about the Lesufi deal - the proof is in the pudding with Nkosi, Japhta, Chabalala and Carnell - and to say Panyaza’s “brand” will be ruined by non-payment is pure hypocrisy.

Lesufi has only himself to blame for the mess he now finds himself in. But if the money is paid by Friday, the YESMEN culture in our game will rescue his reputation and, as Marawa said over a week ago, Panyaza will return to being a candidate for South African President for his manic bid to rescue Moroka Swallows who, whatever happens, are scheduled to play in the third division ABC Motsepe League next season.

Khoza sits with the spoils of the deal in the Pirates training camp in Potchefstroom. Lesufi is scrabbling around for R55m (Khoza said it was “more than Comitis paid for Aces”) and Free State Stars don’t know if they’re in the PSL, the NFD or the grave yard.

These are the facts. The questions that move us beyond this chaos are these:

Will Pirates return the three Stars and their new assistant coach Carnell to Free State Stars if the deal falls through?

Can Free State Stars continue to function given the club's silence during this sordid affair? Will their tiny band of fans simply give up?

Can Khoza, 68, continue to run the PSL where he has presided for over 20 years given his bizarre outbursts which appeared to amount to threats against ANC MEC Lesufi?

Just a political thought: can Lesufi himself escape unscathed as a prominent politician given his part in all this?

And all this of course, flying in the face of FIFA’s directives. You can’t buy promotion, politicians can’t be involved in football, players cannot be discarded or sent to another club unless they are consulted.

In proper footballing nations, teams are deducted 10 points if they go bankrupt. They are demoted, like Scottish champions Rangers, to the LAST available division.

It’s a mess. A terrible mess. Even if Lesufi gets his money by Friday and Khoza goes silent, we face a PSL season like none other. FOUR new clubs, 10 teams out of 16 who look very different to last season. And barely a transfer fee in sight. Millions paid to change clubs, not a penny spent on academies or development.

Though the PSL won’t confirm it, our national premier division suffered their lowest EVER attendances last season, dipping under 6,000. Will Cape Town City, Moroka FC, Highlands Park and Baroka stop that decline? I seriously doubt it.

We are caught up in something called the Carling Champions Cup which involves the fifth and seventh best teams in the country. Two of our Olympic squad are going to be late for Rio because of it.

And PSL sponsors ABSA? Do they get told what happens to their millions?

One final point: Is SAFA, the umbrella under which all this happens, even aware? Has Danny Jordaan, like Lesufi a prominent ANC politician, shown ANY interest?


Here's what I wrote when AmaZulu football, my favourite team, were trying to buy a place back in the PSL a year ago: http://neal-collins.blogspot.co.za/2015/06/relegated-amazulu-cough-up-r82m-to.html

BREAKING EVERY RULE IN THE BOOK: weep no tears for Free State Stars and Aces, the PSL rolls on

SALUTE! Dr Irvin Khoza, PSL chairman
for 20 years, in a military uniform for no
apparent reason 

BILL SHANKLY, the legendary Scotsman who managed Liverpool from from 1959 to 1974, once said: “Football isn’t about life and death. It’s more important than that.”

Fortunately, South Africans don’t live by that code. Money is our God.

In large swathes of Europe, Latin America or even Asia and parts of northern Africa, your football club is your identity. It’s what defines you.

On a social night out, you will wear you team colours with pride; it says something about you, offers an instant introduction. Football is your small-talk, your bed-and-breakfast… in some nations like Spain, Egypt and Scotland, it signifies your tribe, your roots, your religion.

But not in South Africa. Here we don’t have segregated crowds, we don’t divide home and away fans on the way out of the ground with mounted police… and we don’t scare visiting teams when they visit our land for continental competition.

South African football is devoid of passion, wearing a football shirt, though still common, has little to do with identity or outlook. Ultimately, nobody cares. Our national football sides under-perform, our PSL attendances are at an all time low, the president of SAFA is almost entirely absent and openly admits “football is just my hobby”.

Football is the beautiful game, the global passion. But somehow, amid the more obvious horrors of Apartheid, we failed to pick up the essence of the game here at the southern tip of Africa.

Sound harsh? This off-season we found out just how little football means to the average South African. While our cricket and rugby types tend to stick to their local province like glue, we have seen two historic soccer clubs shut down and the very idea of hard-won promotion to the top flight dealt a fatal blow.

There has been no outcry, I have yet to spot an Mpumalanga Black Aces or Free States Stars fan, let alone a protest march packed with them.

Last year, when relegated Amazulu tried to purchase financially troubled Aces for R80m, the PSL rightly denied them the chance to buy their way back. Looking at this FIFA directive distributed in 2007, it’s easy to see why: http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/administration/circular_1132_en_34078.pdf

But this bleak mid-winter, things have taken a turn for the worse. First PSL executive member John Comitis, having left Ajax Cape Town after falling out with his in-laws, was allowed to buy Aces from the Morfou brothers for a price believed to be in the region of R50m.

He kept 14 of their players, released last year’s PSL top scorer Collins Mbesuma and moved the club 1000km south and renamed them Cape Town City. They already have a kit sponsorship and will spend the next 10 months attempting to destroy the established club in the Mother City.

As I speak, Technical Director Craig Rosslee admits the club need another 10 players to start the season. And former Orlando Pirates coach Eric Tinkler, neatly swapped with Aces boss Muhsin Etrugral at Aces, is sifting his way through a legion of cut-price journeymen to fill the gaps.

Then last night we had Gauteng MEC for education Panyaza Lesufi telling Metro FM: “I have saved Moroka Swallows, we are back in the PSL” while refusing to divulge the name of the selling club, the name of the resurrected team and admitting: “The real Swallows will remain in Division Three, we will tell the fans that on Sunday”.

In all my footballing life, I have rarely heard such gushing nonsense from both Lesufi, an ambitious ANC politician, nor his interviewer Robert Marawa. He was asked no searching questions, just patted on the back and told he was a hero destined for the presidency.

BUYING FAVOUR: Article 30 of the NSL's rule book

In fact, he is an elected official breaking FIFA and SAFA rules, but that's not new in this country. Like everybody else, I was sad to see Swallows, an historic Soweto club, slip in to the NFD and then the ABC Motsepe League in successive seasons. Quite where Mr Lesufi was when debt-ridden owner Leon Prins was looking for help over the last two seasons, nobody knows.

At one point, during their NFD relegation battle last season, he said: "Perhaps Swallows need to be relegated again."

On Metro on Tuesday night, we heard Lesufi admitting: “We cannot be called Moroka Swallows in the PSL, but we want to keep the team colours, the bird on the badge and we’ll play at Dobsonville” while neglecting to mention their average crowd over the past five seasons in under 400 (I’d give an exact figure but the PSL keeps these things in the file labelled TOP SECRET).

When Comitis was allowed to buy Aces, the PSL told us he wasn’t really buying promotion, he was stepping in to save a failing business. It’s a very delicate argument, easily knocked down.

But what Lesufi has done, spending an estimated R55m to buy Free State Stars’s place in the PSL, breaks every rule in the book.

As I write, Orlando Pirates - whose elderly chairman Irvin Khoza has run the PSL with an iron hand for 20 years - have already snapped up three Ea Lla Koto players for free with the official announcement of the deal still pending.

Just as with the Ertugral/Tinkler swap, Pirates appear to be the major footballing benefactors with Ayanda Nkosi, Justice Chabalala and Sello Japhta all headed for Parktown with unseemly haste. The little stars of Bethlehem are falling fast.

Free State Stars meanwhile, having announced the arrival of new French coach Denis Lavagne barely a fortnight ago, are believed to be plotting the purchase of NFD club Mthatha Bush Bucks and hope to win the NFD before anybody really notices they’re gone.

I’ve got this picture of Lavagne calling his assistant Bradley Carnell in the morning screaming: “Bradley?! I am at ze training? Where is ze club? Iz gone! Sacre bleu!”

And Moroka Swallows or whatever they’ll be called? No players, no coach, no kit… just a month before the new season. With Gordon Igesund likely to return the Dube Birds, his agent Mike Makaab will no doubt sort out a squad of talented veterans and tough journeymen to do a job.

But for Free State Strars, whose website still talks about the arrival of Lavagne and the player for pre-season not to mention the local Mayoral Cup, there is nothing.

The side finishing 12th in the PSL is GONE. Aces, who finished a record fourth last season? Gone. And Cape Town City will apparently take their place in the lucrative MTN8 pre-season tournament, which must be galling for those who finished below them.

With Highlands Park and Baroka FC promoted, the PSL fixture list will take on a bizarre new look. There will be a Cape Town derby, Roger de Sa against Eric Tinkler, Comitis v Efstathiou, but that’s all Greek to me. Will the “Oldest Soweto Derby” see Moroka Vultures against Orlando Pirates? What happens if Comitis and Lesufi get relegated? Can they just pay to stay up?

The questions are endless. The PSL are talking about kicking-off the new season after the Olympics with midweek games in August. The transfer window is devoid of any real spending. Chippa United, though pleading poverty, have signed 17 new players, including three international selected Orlando Pirates youngers. Dr Khoza has allegedly handed out millions to club chairman to keep the wheels turning.

The NFD remains sponsorless, with a R400,000 prize, while the third division Motsepe League offers a million to their champions. We start the season without a SINGLE South African in the English Premier League, a first in my memory, and even China aren’t buying our locals.

But we soldier on. Lesufi’s Vultures under Igesund may surprise us, Tinkler’s City may overwhelm the odds, Baroka FC might finish above Kaizer Chiefs, who threw out 20 players and signed eight journeymen. Highlands Park v Orlando Pirates sounds like something out of the 80s.

But I've said this all before. There's just one question which needs answering: Why was Lesufi allowed to buy Free State Stars’ place in the PSL when Patrick Sokhela’s AmaZulu were denied the same right a year before? I think we should be told.