We open the year excited as ever with a bumper sporting calendar that’s brimming with some of the most mouthwatering events to anticipate.
And on behalf of the Sunday World sports team, we wish you a new year filled with professional and personal successes.
Thank you for your trust during 2024, and have a prosperous 2025 full of successful projects and fulfilled goals.
Two weeks have not even passed, but the SA sporting fraternity has hit the ground running. Already, there has been a lot to talk and argue about, and most definitely, the fans have found their voices.
Orlando Pirates have stepped up to the big boys, Mamelodi Sundowns, saying “bring it on” this season — unlike in past seasons, where they would just roll over and take the punches.
The Buccaneers and Sundowns are neck and neck at the top on the Premier Soccer League table, setting the scene for a scrumptious league race.
The Brazilians had turned the PSL into a joke, winning the title eight times in the last 10 seasons, including the last seven in a row.
This is all the while Kaizer Chiefs supporters continue to bully the club into submission.
When the die-hard Amakhosi faithful are not telling the club bosses which players to buy, they are also pressing the coach, Nasreddine Nabi, into fielding their favourite players.
As they say, every bonehead with a smartphone these days is a coach, and that is evident after every Chiefs match. The
The problem with Mzansi football lately is that clubs no longer have supporters; they have analysts in the grandstands.
This unnecessary pressure has rather made Nabi’s new start at Amakhosi a little uncomfortable, unpleasant and puzzling.
Even Nabi’s acquisition and arrival were forced by the fans, who were otherwise ready to drop an atomic bomb on Taung Village in Naturena.
Chippa United spilt the beans on the Royal AM players’ mess that dominated the news this week.
The Chilli Boys released a statement seeking answers as to why their match against Royal AM was postponed without any explanation.
This opened a can of worms that revealed that the club’s players had gone on strike after they stomached a bleak Christmas with their December salaries not paid.
The KZN side is owned by charismatic businesswoman and social media celebrity Shauwn “MaMkhize” Mkhize and her son Andile Mpisane.
She will be remembered for handing out wads of cash to players on the field after a win against the Chiefs a few years ago.
MaMkhize is in trouble with the taxman, who is breathing down the flamboyant businesswoman’s neck, demanding his share of the moolah.
In October last year, the league’s executive committee kicked Royal AM out of the DSTV Diski Challenge after the club failed to field a team in the competition.
So, the developments must feel like a recurring wisdom toothache to the PSL.
Across town by the mine dumps at Crown Mines, we are praying and hoping that Safa will restore its dented image and re-establish Bafana Bafana as a powerhouse in Africa so that they can take on the planet’s best at next year’s Fifa World Cup in Mexico and Canada — if we qualify.
The least said about President Danny Jordaan’s fraud court case, the better. That he was not shifted to the side until the case was concluded says a lot about the troubled association.
What a shame!
