The lows of South African football in 2021

The year 2021 was difficult for every football team across the country, including the South African national team Bafana Bafana.

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The South African takes a look at all the lows the country’s football experienced as 2021 comes to an end.

BAFANA FAIL TO QUALIFY FOR AFCON AND WORLD CUP

Bafana Bafana’s 2021 started off with failure to qualify for the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Cameroon in March.

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At the time, Bafana Bafana were coached Molefi Ntseki who was sacked immediately after the national team’s failure to qualify for the continental tournament.

Ntseki was replaced by Hugo Broos who was hired ahead of the start of the FIFA World Cup qualifiers in May.

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And after a promising start to the qualifiers, Bafana Bafana again failed to qualify as they finished second behind Ghana in their group.

THE DEMISE OF BLOEMFONTEIN CELTIC

After years of financial struggles, Max Tshabalala felt the need to sell the status of Bloem Celtic, and this left a bitter taste in the mouths of every football fan.

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And that’s because of the rich history Celtic had and built for decades – and Royal AM were the ones who ended it as Shauwn Mkhize desperately wanted her club to be in the topflight.

STILL NO FANS AT THE STADIUM

The fact that there are still no fans at the stadiums is sad, and football supporters continue to suffer as they are still not allowed anywhere near the stadiums.

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According to the PSL, allowing at least 2000 spectators at stadiums has its complications due to the distribution of tickets.

However, if they could do it for the MTN8 final, then they can still do the same for league matches.

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KAIZER CHIEFS & ROYAL AM FAILURE TO HONOUR FIXTURES

South African football was turned into a circus when both Royal AM and Kaizer Chiefs failed to honour their official fixtures for various reasons.

Royal AM felt they were robbed as they couldn’t automatically make it to the PSL from the GladAfrica Championship.

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They then opted to boycott all their promotion/relegation play-off matches, and later bought Celtic’s PSL status.

Chiefs, on the other hand, couldn’t honour two of their league fixtures as they had over 40 positive cases of Covid-19 within their camp.

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And it was the first time this had happened in the history of the PSL, and it gave the league a gloomy image.