The R120 million that has landed in the bank accounts of Orlando Pirates and Mamelodi Sundowns is not a badge of excellence but a seductive anesthetic for a league rotting from within.
This financial windfall, the combined spoils of a Betway Premiership title and a deep CAF Champions League run, has been paraded as validation of South African football’s elite pedigree. It is, in truth, a dangerous illusion. Cash injections cannot buy professional competence, and the evidence is scattered across the very campaigns that generated these cheques. Sundowns, for all their domestic dominance, were exposed as tactically brittle in the Champions League knockout stages—relying on Peter Shal