Bay no place for PSL team

IN response to Richie Piyose's letter, "Let Chippa United play in Bay" (May 1), there is no way that a soccer team based in Port Elizabeth can survive in the PSL. The soccer fans in this part of the country are diehard supporters of the Soweto giants, namely Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates.

Their problem is that they support teams, not the beautiful game.

Last season the metro used a lot of money to ensure that Maritzburg United played some of their home games here. In all those matches the attendance was very poor, including at the Maritzburg and Sundowns game.

Teams from the Bay, including Bay United that gained promotion through hard work, battled to get good attendance when playing other teams, except when they played Chiefs or Pirates.

The fans go to the stadium in numbers to ensure teams from Gauteng get full points and at the end of the season cry when a local team is relegated.

When we start to support the beautiful game, it will be better as that will open many opportunities in our society as jobs will be created.

Look what is happening in Bloemfontein – those are real football supporters. Bloemfontein Celtic's supporters don't pick and choose home games, they are there to watch every game and they are singing even if their team is down by two goals.

Even Safa doesn't take us seriously. The last time Bafana Bafana played here was in 2009 against Japan and the match was not scheduled for Port Elizabeth.

It was supposed to mark the grand opening of Moses Mabhida Stadium, but the stadium was not completed on time. The game was then moved to the newly opened Orlando Stadium, but due to lighting problems, the game was reluctantly moved to Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium.

I will be very disappointed if the metro considers bringing any team to play home games here. That would result in fruitless expenditure.

Mazola, Port Elizabeth