By David Gold
October 25 – The Premier Soccer League (PSL) has requested that the South African Football Association (SAFA) meet with them as a matter of urgency as they look to find a way to help the national side qualify for the London Olympic Games next year.
The South African under-23 team is playing a qualification tournament in Morocco from the end of November, from which three teams will qualify directly for London, but the dates of the tournament fall outside of the FIFA calendar and club teams are therefore not obliged to release their players.
With South Africa failing to qualify for the Africa Cup of Nations in January, taking place in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, more importance has been placed on the Olympic tournament and the PSL is looking to find a way to accommodate their attempts to qualify for London 2012.
It had been suggested that the PSL could continue to play games during the Africa Cup of Nations, which begins in January, instead of having a break during the tournament as was originally planned, and then play no games during the Olympic qualifiers next month.
The PSL’s Executive Committee met last week but decided to respect the African Nations Cup and continue to hold a break during the tournament.
“We took this decision in order to give the African Cup of Nations the respect it deserves and to ensure that there will be no counter attraction during the continental showpiece,” Dr Irvin Khoza told the PSL’s official website.
“Clubs are advised that there should be no organised events during the tournament except training matches.
“This break will enable players to recuperate following what has been a very congested fixture.”
They did however send a message to SAFA to request a meeting to discuss the Olympic qualifiers, following the plea of under-23 coach Shakes Mashaba, who wants his best players available for the tournament in Morocco, which runs from November 26 to December 10.
“There are issues that I want us to consider and one of the issues is the under-23s,” he said.
“I am now told the under-20 will also have a tournament in November which creates a lot of problems because that affects the Telkom Knockout Cup and league fixtures.
“It is a bit of a challenge.”
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