African continental football is taxing, says Stanley Matthews
JOBURG - SuperSport United CEO Stanley Matthews wants the Premier Soccer League to develop innovative ways of assisting SA clubs to successfully compete in the African continental football and also do well in the local domestic league.
The rough patch experienced by Orlando Pirates in the past season of the Absa Premiership can happen to any club unless measures are put in place to address local teams’ taxing African safari to play continental football.
This is the view of SuperSport United CEO Stanley Matthews, who believes the failure by Orlando Pirates to secure a top eight spot in the premiership was a direct result of the after effects of their gruelling African safari in the past three or so years.
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Speaking in an exclusive interview with Alex News, Matthews said the same was bound to happen to Sundowns or SuperSport if the teams go beyond the group stages of the current Confederation of African Football (Caf) Confederations Cup.
Sundowns have been on this safari for the past one-and-half years, resulting in the team playing non-stop football for close to two years. The Brazilians, having come second in the 2016/17 Absa Premiership, will again undergo the same schedule next year, making it close to four years of non-stop football for the players.
Matthews said the premiership was in itself a very competitive league but playing on the continent was also highly taxing, not just the ability of the players to endure the rigorous schedule but was also financial costly and eventually took its toll on domestic football.
He said the premier league needed to look at innovative ways of assisting SA clubs to compete successfully in Africa, as most of the African tournaments take place in the middle of the domestic season, which tends to disadvantage those teams involved.
One of the things that clubs involved in African continental football could do was to beef up their squad sizes to have a pool of players to call on in the case of injuries and fatigue, he added. “We also need to develop a soccer model to allow us to compete successfully in Africa.”
Another idea was to realign the domestic league to the African calendar. But Matthews said this had often been shot down as it was unworkable in the sense that it fell outside the Fifa calendar and would make it even harder for Bafana Bafana to source players for national and international commitments.
“We need to think out of the box and come up with solutions or ways of helping our teams that are involved in the Caf competitions. I am not sure what those could be but through brainstorming, I am confident we can come up with good and workable suggestions.”
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