PLE BOGS: NO SEASON RESTART UNLESS ...

Sports Editor

MBABANE – Hold your horses! That’s a clear message from the Premier League of Eswatini (PLE) Board of Governors on the four-phase plan presented by the Eswatini Football Association (EFA) regarding the restart of the 2019/2020 season in the next coming weeks.

Last Thursday, the EFA, through its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Frederick Mngomezulu, announced an implementation strategy that will take up to 16 weeks before completion.

However, the PLE Board of Governors have suggested a two-month COVID-19 capacity building exercise which will assist all clubs to learn, understand and adapt to the COVID-19 culture before the first ball is kicked in anger on the restart of the season.

“We want the PLE to appoint a medical doctor (not a dentist) to be in charge of the PLE COVID-19 programme and the coaches must also be under the same training programme on COVID-19 to assist in coming with common training programmes that may have less health risk or exposure to COVID-19,” said one of the PLE Board of Governors, Charles Matsebula, last night.

Matsebula said after the capacity building exercise, teams can start working on resuming their training programme.
“There is also the issue of players’ contracts, which is a private and confidential matter between the employer and employee. FIFA has not automatically extended players contracts. There is no such thing as an automatic extension of contracts. However, FIFA has allowed teams to negotiate with their players, by whatever extension deemed to be reasonable enough, until the pending games are finished,” Matsebula said.

He said since there is a financial obligation, if a club cannot meet it, then a contract cannot be extended.
The clubs also want the PLE to use the E600 000 from the EFA grant to assist them with the financial challenges caused by the suspension of the season and in preparation for the new season.

“Again, the three weeks proposed pre-season is not enough for Eswatini teams because we do not have enough money or resources to buy or sign any players in getting ready for the new season,” he added.
The all-important PLE Board of Governors meeting will be held today at the EFA Technical Centre.

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: