Stars boss alleges soccer doesn’t get sponsors because it’s a ‘black sport’
Free State Stars manager Rantsi Mokoena has slammed corporate SA for not supporting football financially, as it does rugby and cricket.
Luc Eymael, Head coach of Free State Stars and Rantsi Mokoena, general manager of Free State Stars at Stars Academy, Bethlehem (Frikkie Kapp/BackpagePix)
This comes after the Free State government had promised to provide 15 buses to transport fans to the Nedbank Cup final at Cape Town Stadium.
“I am not sure if I want to have this conversation in front of the cameras,” Mokoena said. “It baffles me. I really don’t understand how football being football in this country, consumed by the majority of the population, yet you have so many clubs in the PSL without sponsors.
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“If I must compare with other sporting codes, and not to undermine those codes, but there are some cricket teams that I don’t even know what they are called but they are well sponsored. I doubt that they are doing anything different to what we are doing, except for perhaps that the economy is in different hands. Like I said, I don’t really want to get into this conversation because it may get very political.
“We simply don’t have enough representation in the boardroom as black people,” Mokoena said.
“Football is seen to be a black sport, or consumed by the majority of South Africa’s population, which is black. When you drive past a ‘white school’ you’d find that it has five different boards of five different companies sponsoring the school.
“But if you go to a school in the township, it has zero. Like I said, it’s really a political view and it goes deeper than that. But today is about the Nedbank Cup, let’s talk about that.”
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