Online Reporter
Mugove Chigada
Deputy Sports Editor
The Premier Soccer League must take Tuesday’s events as a big moment – a brutal lesson on how they should properly operate as a league.
When they were left licking their wounds after their governors’ resolution to scrape relegation was blocked, never mind who shot it down, it was perhaps a reminder to go back to basics, knowing where to draw the line for starters.
The Isaiah Mupfurutsa-led board must immediately cede power to their secretariat led by Rodwell Thabe, who is the chief executive officer, even if it means constitutional amendments or policy adjustments can be made to further solidify the position.
That way, any resolutions that they may make as governors, which in most cases are driven by clubs’ self-interests or football politics – as was the case with the infamous Tuesday decision from hell – can be looked at by the secretariat with a collective eye.
What it means is that their secretariat will be properly positioned to defend their constitution, rules of tournaments, and fair play.
From that point, PSL, a member of Zimbabwe Football Association, will then be able to map how they engage with the mother body for the development of the game.
That way, the secretariat becomes a truly separate entity from the clubs it governs, only there to follow policy laid down by the governors as the guiding principles to achieve the collective goal.
Unlike the local PSL, the Premier League in England has a Chair who is not a member of any club but elected into office by the clubs.
The role of the chair is to oversee the league as a whole, not represent a specific team. In PSL’s scenario, given the chair is from one of the clubs, Simba Bhora, in line with their constitution, it only makes sense for the clubs to then give autonomy to the secretariat.
And Thabe must be able to advise the board to engage Zifa or to engage directly, whichever the statutes allow, on issues they feel do not align with their objectives or violate both the PSL and Zifa constitutions.
If there is confrontation, it won’t be the first in football. In fact, Zifa President Nqobile Magwizi must hold with suspicion a PSL that does not object on some things, for such a league could be the biggest saboteurs of his reign.
In 2015, the Premier League clubs in England, through their executive chair Richard Scudamore, rejected FA chairman Greg Dyke’s proposals to increase home-grown players from eight to 12.
This, the FA argued, would reverse England’s record of failure at major tournaments. Scudamore, representing the Premier League, said such a decision would have far-reaching consequences and feared “artificial” quotas that might hinder competitiveness.
When the Zimbabwe PSL chief executive can stand against Zifa on issues they think can hinder progress, football wins, sponsors win, clubs win, PSL win, and Zifa are the ultimate winners.
Closer to home, the South African PSL was at loggerheads with the South African Football Association in 2020 over the referees’ sponsorship deal with an insurance company. The R10m-a-year five-year sponsorship, SA PSL argued, infringed on the rights of the sponsors.
After that fall-out, which went to arbitration, they still kissed and made up, and football continued.
As we reflect on the black Tuesday, when PSL governors made the unpopular call, it should also be known they missed the golden opportunity to table the most important issue before Zifa.
When the association wrote requesting them to start the ball rolling on increasing the teams in the league to 20, they should have put conditions to the association.
And the most important issue on the relegation subject is to reduce the number of teams that are relegated every season. Instead, clubs had their selfish interests – the immediate benefits that could accrue.
The real outcry is that the percentage of clubs relegated from Zim PSL is just too high to ensure long term stability.
You can’t have a board that has 10 new faces out of 18 after every three years. For the record, only seven teams in the PSL this year avoided relegation since 2017. These are FC Platinum, Dynamos, Ngezi Platinum, Chicken Inn, CAPS United, Highlanders, and
Yadah. Triangle and ZPC Kariba were relegated at one point and bounced back.
That a total of 20 teams have been relegated from PSL in five seasons – since 2017 when the league increased teams to 18 – summarises PSL’s dilemma. Of the 20 relegated, Hwange went down three times during the same period, Harare City twice, and
Bulawayo City twice. Among those 20 relegated since 2017, only TelOne and Triangle are back in the thick of things.
On another day, a separate Tuesday, PSL, through the wisdom of the chief executive, could have written back to Zifa and said, “We increase to 20 teams in 2026 by relegating four, accepting the four promoted, holding playoffs for the other two slots, but ONLY relegate two teams by the end of 2026”.
The PSL could go on and talk about issues of stadiums, to give Zifa more responsibility on the implications of such a move.
But that will only happen when PSL governors do not see the PSL chief executive as small, but the biggest man in the room, a man whose interests lie with 18 clubs and not just one.
