Santos FC owner Goolam Allie insists he would rather give away the club to the community than buy a status back to the PSL.
The former Premier Soccer League [PSL] champions were relegated from the DStv Premiership to the Motsepe Foundation championship, the second-tier league back in 2012.
It has since been a downward spiral for the club as they were later relegated to the SAFA ABC Motsepe League in 2017. They have had big-name players such as Edries Burton, Andre Arendse, Musa Otieno, Duncan Crowie and Jean-Marc Ithier play for them over the years.
While there has been an emergence of new clubs and some old clubs resurfacing through the buying of status, Santos FC remains at the amateur level.
NO CHANCE OF SANTOS FC BUYING A STATUS BACK TO THE PSL
Allie has explained to FARPost why he doesn’t agree with the selling and buying of statuses.
“I don’t agree with it,” he said. “If ever I have to do anything with Santos I would give it to the community so that they can take it somewhere. It’s not about selling and buying; it must remain [in the community].
“You don’t sell a club from one area, and then it moves to another area. It’s not on. I don’t believe in that and I have always raised it at PSL level,” he explains.
GOOLAM ALLIE SHARES HIS THOUGHTS ON THERE IS LACK OF SUPPORT AT STADIUMS
“If Manchester United sell their shares, they don’t move from Manchester. That is why we don’t have strong support bases. I can safely tell you I don’t agree with the clubs; one week, they play at FNB Stadium, and the other week, they play in Polokwane.
“I don’t believe that’s the right thing to do, but we have normalised that in this country. Generally, Chiefs and Pirates have support throughout the country because of many factors, political and all those things coming into play,” he said.
“But we should have developed a basis where if you go to FNB, that is Chiefs’ home base. If you come to Cape Town, it should be Santos or whoever’s home base. But what has happened is that if you were to come to Santos versus Chiefs, out of 15,000, 3,000 would support Santos, and the rest are Chiefs.
“There is no loyalty to the area and the region, which we should have developed because then our football would have been far.”
RELATED STORY: Ex-PSL club owner fears Irvin Khoza’s exit could spell doom
