Soccer, is it a points-frenzy game?

LUKE ALFRED

Here the accent is on points, points eked out, and points hauled in, points gobbled, and points burgled, the number of points it takes to win the title, and the number required to avoid relegation. Here is a world in which everything points to points.

Stan Matthews, SuperSport United’s chief executive for the past 21 years (bar an unhappy seven-month period at the Premier Soccer League) is not immune to the points-frenzy. He says, for example, that when United last won the PSL league title in 2009/10, they did so with 57 of them, one more than their perennial rivals, Mamelodi Sundowns.

They have not won the league since, cornering the “close-but-no-cigar” market in a way that annoys them. “We haven’t finished fourth or higher in the league since 2012,” says Matthews with feeling. “We just haven’t been able to sustain things over 30 games. Our biggest points haul since winning the league was 48 under Stuart Baxter. Getting 48 again this season remains our first objective.”

With two-thirds of the season already over, SuperSport are currently fourth in the league on 34 points, one behind Sundowns and two behind Orlando Pirates, both of whom have matches in hand.

The problem, says Matthews, is not necessarily what’s up ahead but what’s scampering up behind. Bidvest Wits are fifth, only four points off United, but with six games in hand. It means, he says, that there’s a slight artificiality in saying SuperSport are currently sitting in fourth because, more realistically, they’re in fifth, the spot Wits now occupy.

While there have been some excruciating frustrations in the league since SuperSport wrested the title in the World Cup year, they’ve been balanced to some extent by their astounding talent for doing well in cup football, their last cup victory being the MTN 8 in October.

Indeed, knockout football, with its helter-skelter glamour and promise of relatively quick riches, seems to suit the SuperSport temperament. All in all, United have won a healthy nine cup titles in the 21 years Matthews has been in charge, an achievement unsurpassed in the local environment. From their opponents’ point-of-view, it means a match against SuperSport is often fraught with danger given their reputation.

“I don’t have the anxiety I once had when I was younger,” says Matthews, “and winning the MTN was great because it gives us a bit of a safety net to plot out the rest of the season. That said, I would love to win a gold star [what you get on the jersey if your club wins the league title] but I just don’t think we’ve been consistent enough in the last eight or nine seasons to deserve that.”

If Matthews is just a tad ornery about SuperSport United’s tendency to do well in knockout competition while struggling to close out another league title, there are probably good reasons for being so. For a start, United have neither the cash nor the squad size to compete with ‘Downs, Pirates and Chiefs, the so-called “big three”. They have traditionally lost players to richer clubs, and they’re reluctant to enter into the kind of vanity projects that bigger clubs sometimes embark upon in chasing big name stars.

“Paying players more money sometimes brings more problems than it solves,” says Matthews sagely. “Yes, give me a Hlompho Kekana (at Sundowns) or a Keagan Dolly (at Montpellier), they’re bankers, but it’s not always a percentage game. You don’t always want to throw ego money at big-name transfers because that’s not always the way that it turns out in reality.”

As for Matthews personally (aside from the club), his appetite for the PSL scrap remains undimmed. “I feel I was born to do this,” he says with a relish that positively crackles down the phone line.

He goes on to detail the fact that the PSL is a good product, a good television product, and a seriously well-run league. This being South Africa, though, there is, of course, a “but” tucked in there somewhere.

He gets frustrated, for example, that the administrative side of the game isn’t more dynamic and that the gains of the national side, Bafana Bafana, in the ten years since the World Cup, appear to be so halting.

He also gets bothered by the fact that scouting from the national association seems so erratic. He would desperately like it if some of United’s players got recognised in the way he believes they deserve, but calms himself in the knowledge that cream always rises to the top. In a word, he’d like to do more, both within the context of his club and in the context of the broader game. Matthews might have been at United for 21 years bar a couple of months, but the fires of improvement burn as brightly as they once did.