Cape Town - The South Africa Football Association (SAFA) has tried to buy time for the national team Bafana Bafana who will play a crucial AFCON Group K qualifier on 24 March, in Johannesburg.
The PSL's Premiership fixtures will break officially for the FIFA international window on Monday, 20 March, and end on 28 March. Those players, who are available, will start reporting to the national team camp from Sunday, 19 March.
Apart from the March 24 match against Liberia, Bafana Bafana play hosts Liberia in the return fixture on 28 March, in the capital city Monrovia.
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The one good thing for the national team is that the March 24 fixture will be a home match, and travelling will not cut into training time. The one bad thing is that Mamelodi Sundowns, who will very likely supply the bulk of the national squad, are playing a Champions League match in Sudan on Saturday, 18 March.
Sundowns players will likely only be available two days later, after returning from the Northeast African country. The rest of the squad will come from mostly Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates, who are both playing on Saturday, 18 March.
Because of the 18 March fixtures, most of the players will arrive at the training camp on the back of matches played in the last three days. Apart from Sundowns' match, the local Premiership have six weekend matches ahead of the national squad's training camp.
A small bonus for Bafana Bafana is that the 28 March match will be played in Liberia rather than Morocco. After CAF ruled that Liberia did not have a suitable playing venue for international matches, Morocco offered them a 'home' venue for their opening fixture.
Since then, Liberia have upgraded their national stadium, and it has been declared fit for international matches. The trip to Liberia is somewhat shorter than to Morocco, as well as time-saving.
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Ideally, Bafana Bafana would have liked the domestic fixtures to stop ahead of the 17-19 March weekend matches, and that would allow the players to arrive fresh for a training camp. It would allow the national team coaches more time to prepare adequately for the two matches.
Suspending domestic matches in the interest of the national team is nothing new for African countries. It has been done countless times.
In past times, when SAFA was headed by the late Solomon 'Stix' Morewa, there were several instances where domestic matches were suspended to give Bafana Bafana added time to prepare for matches.
In those days, Morewa and one of the PSL's bigwigs Kaizer Motaung enjoyed a close association, and SAFA's requests were well received.
Things are vastly different today, and the relationship between SAFA and the PSL is non-existent.
SAFA is the controlling body of football in South Africa, but that is merely on paper. The PSL acts like it is the supreme body in the country, and that is not likely to change in the future.
There will be even less sympathy for the SAFA in the PSL corridors now that the former referee Andile 'Ace' Ncobo has been appointed as the PSL's general manager of the football department.
Fours years ago, Ncobo called on FIFA to place SAFA under administration. He said SAFA had broken almost all its statutes and that of FIFA.
At the time, he warned that if FIFA fails to dissolve the SAFA leadership, he would be forced to take football's world football governing body to court.
@Herman_Gibbs