Wanted: A giant for the PSL

Last season SuperSport United retained their PSL title with 16 wins from 30 games. That is a win ratio of 53% and they also lost 7 games, 4 of them at home. That translates to a loss ratio of close to 25% overall and 27% at home. They scored 45 goals and conceded 22 on their way to that triumph. That’s a ratio of 1.5 goals a match scored and 0.75 conceded. Hardly the stuff of a dominant team that.

By comparison English champions Man Utd won 28 of 38 matches (74%) lost just the 4 matches for a loss ratio of 11%. Three of those losses came away from home (11%) and they scored 68 goals (1.8 goals per game) en route to their hat-trick title. In Spain, Barcelona won 27 of 38 matches (71%) and scored 105 goals for a staggering 2.76 goals per game average, they also lost just twice at home over 38 matches. A league that compares somewhat favourably is in Brazil — Sao Paulo won the Brasileiro with a 55% (21 wins from 38 matches) win ratio, losing just 5 matches (just the one at home) for a loss ratio of 13% and scoring 66 goals at a rate of 1.75 a game. The Brazil league of course has the caveat of continuously haemorrhaging world-class talent to the lure of the European leagues.

Matsatsa’s preceding title also came with a 50% win ratio, a 1.3 goals-scored-per-game ratio, 0.87 conceded and a 27% loss ratio. Now of course they still did better than all the other teams who faced the same fixtures against the same teams, so fair play to them for managing to do so twice in succession. What the numbers above tell though is of a league deeply mired in mediocrity.

The last time a team won the league with any measure of authority was in the swashbuckling years of the 1997-2000 Sundowns team under Ted Dumitru and then Paul Dolezar, who won the league with a 68% win ratio (this in a 34-game fixture list) and the last of those titles in 1999-2000 was achieved while the team scored 2 goals a game, conceded an average of 1 a game and 11 points ahead of second-placed Orlando Pirates. Since then there has been a succession of teams who have come out on top by virtue of being less mediocre than those below them.

There are those who say this points to a league where there is an even spread of depth, talent and tactical nous. But everybody knows that even in the era of megabucks swilling around the PSL pool there are still a handful of clubs who posses a financial clout far greater than everyone else, and I’m not just talking about the shopaholics otherwise known as Patrice Motsepe’s Sundowns here. There are also very few coaches who have brought enough stability and success to their teams for an argument to be made for technical nous being ubiquitous in the league. As for depth in talent, really? Seriously? In a league where a player has been top goalscorer despite playing only half a season? Where a scoring run lasting but a dozen games can make one a shoo-in for top goalscorer after 30 games, half of whom are played at home?

The PSL is in my view, made up of largely okay teams playing okay football more often than not. The problem is every now and then we see dazzling footballing spectacles that get us all excited at a supposed buffet of sumptuous football that is often nothing but a mirage. For every goalless 52-pass movement by Sundowns you have a thoroughly outplayed Kaizer Chiefs almost scoring from their first touch of the ball. Is that quality to you?

SA football has a lot of potential. I say that mostly because I want to believe it. Every year in the PSL thus far has produced a new star set that takes a season by the scruff of its neck. From George Koumantarakis and Jerry Sikhosana in the mid 90s to the Godfrey Sapulas, Mbulelo Mabizelas, Jabu Pules, Collins Mbesumas, King Khunes and the current would be king — Teko Modise. What the PSL needs now is a team to do the same. Sundowns have done it before. My own beloved Orlando Pirates threatened to do so under Kosta Papic before that (almost) predictably fizzled out when it came to the crunch. But by and large the story has been about arch-mediocrities pseudo-lording it over teams that were never more than one or two wins away from usurping them.

How many teams from the PSL era can compare favourably with their forebears from the NSL days? Kaizer Chiefs have averaged about a trophy a season in the PSL era, but how many from the “vat alles” era could walk into the teams from the Jeff Butler days? That is too telling.

That surely cannot have been the dream when SA football marched bravely into the professional era in 1996?