Highlands chair denies club sale

Highlands Park chair Brad Kaftel has denied that they have sold the club.

Rumours surfaced at the weekend that the Lions of the north were to be sold to TS Galaxy owner Tim Sukazi, with the pricetag put at more than R50m, but Kaftel insisted that there is no truth to the rumour.

“We’ve never sat down as a board of directors and said we want to sell the club,” Kaftel said on Sunday.

“We got into this business because we are passionate about Highlands Park. I played for Highlands Park in 1982 so we got involved with this club as the passionate main supporters.

“I have been with this club since I was 19 and I’m 57 — [that’s] almost 40.”

But the chair admitted they would consider a good offer if approached.

“We are not putting the club for sale. All we said in the past was that if somebody approaches us with an offer and we have to consider, it will break our hearts.

“But I suppose, financially, things are tough and we will have to look at it.”

Kaftel also said he has been talking to Sukazi and if the club was to be sold, it could only happen at the end of the season.

“Nothing is concluded at this point. Look, as the business, people talk to us but it is not different to any normal businesses,” Kaftel said.

“There are rumours. We see it but we don’t comment. The truth is any sale of players or team will only happen when the season is over.

“Probably when the season is over I can give you information, but at this point we are focusing on resuming the six games and we want to win all of them.”

Kaftel, however, said running a PSL club was not easy and that they were struggling financially.

“It is a tough business. Football business is not easy. To make a good return out of is difficult.

“We certainly have not made profit in the GladAfrica Championship and Absa Premiership during  the six years of running the club,” he said.

“It is costly, in the last six years we lost money every year, that’s a fact. It is a very tough environment.”

Highlands are eighth on the table, but football has been suspended since mid-March because of coronavirus.

Meanwhile, adapting to life under Covid-19 has been massively challenging and this has forced the Mamelodi Sundowns technical team under coach Pitso Mosimane to explore innovative ways to conduct training sessions.

The Brazilians have been in camp in Rustenburg since sports minister Nathi Mthethwa gave the go-ahead for non-contact and contact sport to resume training.

“It’s a new life and we have to adjust and be innovative‚” Mosimane said.

“We were never trained to practise in small groups or observing social distancing‚ the coaching manual has never had that.

“It’s frustrating but at the same time it has been good with its own positives and challenges.

“I would say that the challenges are the new training programmes because we are in a situation where we have to train in small groups and observe social distancing.

“When you’re training‚ it is about being clever and finding alternatives.”

Though it has been challenging‚ Mosimane said there was no need to complain.

He said they had elected to get on with the business of preparing for the possible resumption of the season as all the clubs were dealing with the same difficulties.

“We have managed to get the conditioning up even though the tactical awareness is not that good.

“Instead of playing eleven against eleven to get movements‚ we train in departments and we don’t train the whole team.

“On Thursday, it was the first day we did our video analysis because we can’t go into a conference room and all sit there.” – SowetanLIVE, additional reporting by TimesLIVE