The league boss will host a press conference at 12 noon soon after meeting with Safa to iron out their differences but what can South Africa expect?
PSL chairman Dr Irvin Khoza is expected to hold a press conference on Monday afternoon on the resumption of the 2019-20 season.
Football in the country has been suspended since mid-March due to the coronavirus pandemic and there have been meetings between the PSL and the South African Football Association (Safa) on what to do next.
The PSL deliberated in their board of governors meeting last week where their resolutions were communicated to Safa.
But what exactly is Khoza expected to tell the football fraternity?
Resumption date
The league has always maintained its intentions to complete the season no matter the circumstances.
And that appears to be edging closer to reality after Thursday’s board of governors meeting which included all the 32 teams under the PSL umbrella.
Khoza is expected to tell the country of the league’s decision and reasons behind suggesting July 18 as the restart date for the suspended campaign.
The league intends to complete the season by August 31 – and there are 54 matches still to play for teams in the elite league, 44 for NFD clubs as well as three Nedbank Cup matches.
The majority of teams have already returned to training to prepare for the return of competitive football – but there are concerns that some teams may find the July 18 date too close as they only started training as a group last week.
As things stand, the league’s biggest concern is to finish the season and focus on next season – more so because Absa is pulling out its sponsorship to the league at the end of it all.
Furthermore, June 30 was the final day that saw teams receive their monthly grants, meaning should the league not resume as suggested by the league then more teams will suffer financially.
Bio-bubble province to stage games
According to the communication sent to Safa by the PSL, Gauteng has been identified as the biologically safe province and has been put forward to stage the remaining matches of the season.
Khoza has the responsibility to take football fans and clubs to his confidence as to why they opted for the Gauteng province.
This question will be asked because the province is the new epicentre for the coronavirus having recorded more confirmed positive cases in recent weeks.
In last month’s Joint Liaison Committee meeting, the task team elected by both members of Safa and the PSL set out conditions for the restart of the season, and one of them was that the season cannot be concluded in a province deemed the epicentre.
In this case, Gauteng has been chosen ahead of both KwaZulu-Natal and North West who have recorded far lesser positive cases and have facilities to accommodate all 32 teams.
Stand-off between PSL and Safa
The latest developments suggest Safa isn’t too pleased with the manner in which the PSL is handling this whole ‘return-to-play’ situation.
The country’s FA has sent their response to PSL’s suggested return date of July 18 and has slammed the league for undermining Sports Minister Nathi Mthethwa’s directive that Safa, as the mother body, should play an overarching role until the end of the season.
Khoza will be expected to give clarity as to why the PSL has overlooked Mthethwa’s directive and opted to do things their way without Safa’s involvement.
Safa said in their response, no football should be played at least until after August 1 – this has been their stance since the lockdown started in South Africa.
South Africa is still under lockdown Level 3 and Safa feels this is not the right time to play football because players and officials will be exposed to the coronavirus.
As things stand, the country is recording over 10 000 new cases almost every day, and that alone is a concern to Safa.
And Khoza is expected to address this stand-off between PSL and Safa without, of course, undermining their administration.
Number of positive cases in the PSL
Lastly, the PSL boss will be expected to confirm the number of positive cases across all 32 teams.
The clubs have conducted a second round of testing but none of them has made their results public – and this is a growing concern because even Safa reportedly doesn’t know.
A few weeks ago, only a few clubs made their results public, including Orlando Pirates, Cape Town City, Kaizer Chiefs, Bloemfontein Celtic, Stellenbosch FC, Swallows FC and TS Galaxy.
At the time, there were only 13 confirmed cases; the number the majority of team doctors expected to have risen by now – but everyone has gone silent, including the league itself.
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