It will strengthen our league

A few weeks ago, an article by Jack Kearns set South African football circles buzzing. Kearns is an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa, a FIFA-licensed agent, a scholar with an LLB from University of South Africa (UNISA) and a Master's in International Sports Law from Real Madrid’s Universidad Europea. In this interview with Soccer Laduma’s Delmain Faver, Kearns unpacks a question many fans posed after Bafana Bafana’s qualification to the FIFA World Cup and the final match against Rwanda, where an entirely local-based starting lineup took to the field: why are so few South African footballers playing abroad? His analysis touched nerves and raised uncomfortable truths about visibility, player pathways, agent politics and the comfort of the PSL ecosystem.

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JK: Internationally, will it help us? You can look at it either way. Look at the trouble caused for Cameroon going into the Africa Cup of Nations. There are many examples where African players go abroad and think, well, actually, why do I need to play for my national team? Playing for my country is just a mission, actually. I've got to travel across half the world to get there. The conditions are terrible. Then when I get back home, I’m knackered, and I’ve got to compete at the highest level in the world. So, they don’t actually like it. But most of them do it, they wear their heart on their sleeve, and they want to do it for their country. It’s the right thing to do. I’m not saying that it will definitely improve us on the international stage, but there will be an impact. It will strengthen our league by allowing the younger talented players to take the places of the more senior players who move abroad, which in turn will elevate the standard of our players. That improvement will have a natural knock-on effect even if the national team remains largely locally based, the overall level of competition will rise. Most importantly, it will create more opportunities for our younger, more talented players to break through.

DF: You also highlighted the issue of inflated transfer fees, especially from the 'Big Three' (Kaizer Chiefs, Orlando Pirates and Mamelodi Sundowns). How much of a barrier is that in reality? How often are players losing opportunities simply because local clubs overvalue them?