We should all take our hats off and bow down before the King of Alex football, Maimane Alfred Phiri of Map Games fame.
He has just hosted yet another highly successful development tournament for Alexandra football, which saw more than 170 teams take part in the four-month tournament.
Dubbed the World Cup of Alexandra, the bulk of the teams in the tournament came from Alexandra. More than 100 teams of various ages, both boys and girls, from the Alexandra Northrand Local Football Association leagues participated in the tournament.
Gauteng, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo provinces provide the balance of the teams, mainly in the senior division of the tournament, with well-known names such as Baroka FC being one of the perennial campaigners of the Map Games.
The magnitude of the support and participation in the tournament has led to the Map Games outgrowing Alexandra, and there is already calls to take the tournament to another level. One of the suggestions is for Phiri to turn the tournament into a national event, but still retain Alex as the home of the tournament.
The top flight football teams-starved community of Alexandra came out in their numbers for the final of the seniors leg of the tournament and the Alexandra Stadium was packed to the rafters, much to the envy of the Premier Soccer League (PSL) which can hardly pull a handful of spectators to most of its games.
Although there is already talk of bringing a PSL team to Alex, I personally believe that talk is premature for now, as the City of Johannesburg must first make good of its promise and obligations of revamping the Alex stadium, and ensuring that it is up to standard to be able to host games of the magnitude of the premier league.
The City needs to up the capacity of the stadium by building more stands, a higher and much stronger fence to protect players and officials from pitch invasions, and ensure that there is sufficient exits to empty the stands in minutes in case of an emergency.
All those elements are currently not available at the stadium, and hence a PSL team using it as their home ground is too premature at this point in time, although we all would welcome such a move, seeing that Alex United FC is not doing us any good so far.
