Times Of Swaziland: ESWATINI RANKED 20TH  BEST LEAGUE IN AFRICA!

ESWATINI RANKED 20TH  BEST LEAGUE IN AFRICA!
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Gcina Dlamini on 23/06/2022 08:36:00


MBABANE – Eswatini’s league features among the top 20 professional football
leagues in Africa as per the latest rankings.
The rating is mainly based on competitiveness, sponsorship and administration of
the various leagues in the 54 members of the Confederation of African Football
(CAF). MTN Eswatini is the sponsor of the Holy Grail of Eswatini football. The
past season’s sponsored package was E6 million, while recently-crowned
champions Royal Leopard walked away with E1 million.
According to information sourced from thesportsbay.com – a website that gives
regular sports news updates on a daily basis to millions of readers around the
world; the country’s league is ranked 20 behind Zimbabwe’s Premier League.
This is not the first time the Premier Soccer League (PLE) has been ranked in
the best top 20 as in 2014 the country was ranked 14th in Africa.
PLE Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Kenneth Makhanya said this was a step in the
right direction as this was an improvement looking at where they came from. “I
would like to congratulate the PLE for being in the top 20 in CAF; this shows
great improvement looking at where we come from. A great job has been done, but
this does not mean that we should relax; instead we should work harder to ensure
that next time we get even better results.
Challenges
“When you consider the challenges football leagues had to overcome since the
COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020, one can only salute this achievement by the
PLE. The PLE Board of governors, executive committee and staff have worked
really hard to ensure that the leagues complete their fixtures,” he said.
Makhanya said special acknowledgement should go to the Eswatini Football
Association (EFA), Referees Association and Coaches Association for their
valuation contribution to the PLE.  “Eswatini MTN deserves special recognition
for the role it has played, in continuing to sponsor the PLE despite the
lockdowns and empty stadiums football had to deal with; Y’ello MTN has been a
true friend, partner and sponsor to the PLE,” Makhanya said.
He said going forward, the challenge of getting a stadium that complies with CAF
standards needed to be addressed. “Playing our home games out of country is a
serious impediment to developing local football. We need to work together to
resolve this challenge. As we prepare for a new season, we hope that Somhlolo
Stadium will become available for PLE matches and that we can finalise sponsors
for the knockout cups that have not been played due to COVID-19 restrictions,”
he said. In these rankings the Egyptian Premier League is ranked the best ahead
of Morocco’s Botola Pro. The top five is completed by Tunisia’s Ligue
Professionnelle, Algeria’s Ligue Professionelle 1 and South Africa’s DStv
Premiership, respectively.