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Greed and passion for instant fame disguised as love for football must stop now.
If not, our Premier Soccer League (PSL) leaders will forever be left abashed.
Over the past years greed saw some people buy clubs with no intention but to sell those clubs later for profit because “money talks”.
That would happen despite having initially claimed to be buying a club “for the love of the game”.
The PSL better be weary of these charlatans masquerading as being pro-football development citizens – lest you invite yourselves to player-protests due to non-salary payments that could possibly lead to fixture disruptions and the stifling of talent because of these tricksters.
Yes, we concur that football is business.
As such, when a club owner starts losing money with no returns there is no point in continuing with the business of owning a club, especially after trying in vain to find solutions.
And as such, desperate measures call for desperate actions.
This we say because by then there would already have been endless complaints from players and other people attached to clubs for not being paid their salaries on time – if not nothing at all.
But in the case of Celtic, speculation is rife that money has not been properly used strictly for football related matters.
It is also quite worrying that when such disharmony happens, morale in the team gets worse.
Results would also not be forthcoming.
Supporters will stay at home, as it has been happening at the financially troubled Masokolara (Bloemfontein Celtic) who is also known as Phunya Sele Sele.
Lately Siwelele (supporters) are very angry that club chairman Max Tshabalala has not kept some of the promises he made when he took over from Jimmy Augosti in 2015.
To make matters worse, supporters who have deserted their club in numbers in the past two seasons or so, are worried that Celtic could be sold to people who are not Mangaung-based with an intention to take it away from them.
Tshabalala himself mentioned on radio the other day that if they do not find a buyer from within Bloemfontein, he will be left with no option but to consider selling Phunya Sele Sele to anyone who will make a good offer.
That means whether it stays in Mangaung or not.
What utter disdain.
Please give this man a red-card from football.
The whole sorry suggests that Tshabalala, by getting involved in running an one-time crowd-pulling professional club of Celtic’s stature with such a passionate following, like Siwelele was a big risk, if not a mistake.
It looks like he did not or does not know that Siwelele members, who on their own are a tourist attraction, deserve respect and appreciation.
It has been inconsiderate of him to say he would sell Celtic even if it were to be taken out of Mangaung.
How could the man be so reckless, knowing that the supporters he found at the club were loyal to the team because of the sacrifices made by Molemela and his management teams?
The late Dr Rantlai Petrus Molemela, also known as Whitehead, potentially lost millions when he sold Celtic to Augosti for a meagre R600 000.
Molemela did that to guarantee that Celtic does not end up being called something like Amanzimtoti Magwinya FC at a later stage.
If indeed Celtic were in trouble financially and had to be sold no matter what, there would then be nothing wrong if that buyer would be made to sign a contract that binds him or her to never take Celtic out of the City of Roses, nor sell it to someone who could break that agreement later.
- Our football, the PSL which is Africa’s pride, must make sure that tricksters do not go through the cracks, if I may.
