PSL hits spot with award winners
Awards will, by their nature, stir debate, with some insisting that the trophy went to the wrong nominee, or indeed that the rightful winner was not nominated at all.
Thembinkosi Lorch during the Premier Soccer League Awards at Durban International Convention Centre. (Photo by Anesh Debiky/Gallo Images)
However, in general, I think the PSL Awards on Sunday night picked the right winners, with Thembinkosi Lorch the star of the show, walking home with the Players Player-of-the-Season and Footballer-of-the-Season awards. Lorch had an amazing campaign in a Buccaneers shirt and it matters not a jot that Pirates ended the campaign without silverware. We saw a similar instance in England this season, with Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk grabbing the PFA Player-of-the-Season Award, even though it was Manchester City that ended up winning the English Premier League title.
Lorch, like Van Dijk, was a standout player in his respective league this season, scoring 15 times across all competitions. In the Absa Premiership alone, he netted nine times and produced five assists, meaning he was involved in only just under a third of all the league goals scored by this club in the 2018/19 campaign.
It was, on the other hand, also great to see Hlompho Kekana finally get recognition for an amazing career with Mamelodi Sundowns, picking up the Absa Premiership Midfielder-of-the-Season award.
One could argue that Lorch, also nominated as a midfielder, should have won this, given that he picked up the Footballer-of-the-Season, but that is an award for your contribution across all Premier Soccer League competitions.
There is an equally decent argument that Kekana should win the award on the basis of his Absa Premiership displays, with his tireless midfield performances a huge reason that Sundowns were able to pip Pirates to the post in the title race.
Another Sundowns star, Ricardo Nasciemento, was excellent in the heart of the Masandawana defence and merited the Absa Premiership Defender-of-the-Season Award, while it was also impossible to argue with the selection of SuperSport’s stellar young midfielder Teboho Mokoena as Young Player-of-the-Season.
In a good awards ceremony for goalkeepers, Peter Leeuwenburgh was a worthy winner of the MTN8 Player-of-the-Tournament, while Elvis Chipezeze was similarly rewarded with the Telkom Knockout Player-of-the-Tournament.
Ronwen Williams did let in a healthy amount of goals, meanwhile, for an Absa Premiership Goalkeeper-of-the-Season, but he did play every minute of his sides games and just about merited squeezing out Denis Onyango for the gong.
And it was also fitting that the man who had the season’s final say, TS Galaxy’s Zakhele Lepasa, burying Kaizer Chiefs with a last minute penalty to seal the Nedbank Cup, won that competition’s Player-of-the-Tournament Award.
We have interviews with Lepasa, Williams, Lorch and more inside this week’s Phakaaathi, while Pitso Mosimane, who was the obvious winner of the Coach-of-the-Season award, also has his say.
Josef Vukusic was perhaps unlucky not to be nominated for Coach-of-the-Season, but the Slovakian does not look like he will be returning to City next season – we find out about this and more in our regular One on One section on Page 6.
Still on the go, of course, are the play-offs for the Absa Premiership season, while the Cosafa Cup starts this weekend and the Africa Cup of Nations is on from next month.
Not to mention Amajita at the Fifa Under-20 World Cup in Poland and Banyana Banyana at the Fifa Women’s World Cup in France. The football just keeps on coming.
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