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Time to confront the crisis at the heart of the game
The Star
|July 15, 2025
SOUTH African football is in crisis. And not the kind that can be spun away with PR talk about “transition phases” or “teething problems.”
This is structural decline: boardroom power plays, unpaid players, clubs being bought and sold with minimal vetting of new owners, and governing bodies that often look the other way.
The Pretoria High Court's scathing judgment against Royal AM — a club already expelled from the PSL — should be a tipping point.
The court ruled that the PSL had valid grounds to expel the club, even before it was placed under business rescue by SARS in November 2024.
Why? Because Royal AM reportedly misled the league on multiple occasions — including failing to disclose changes in shareholding, accumulating unpaid debts that resulted in Fifa-imposed player-transfer bans, and ultimately demonstrating a breakdown in operational stability.
This story is from the July 15, 2025 edition of The Star.
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