Kadodia Rubbishes Maritzburg Sale Rumours

Maritzburg United chairman Farook Kadodia has rubbished rumours of the club’s potential sale, saying they are coming from people who are trying to destabilise his club.

Reports broke this week that Maritzburg’s status is up for sale, with the Pietermaritzburg club lying at the bottom of the table with just two games to go.

The Team of Choice is rooted at the bottom of the DStv Premiership table with just 26 points after 28 matches played, with the worst goal difference (-17) compared to the other teams who are fighting for survival, with 15th-placed Chippa United (-11) and 14th-placed Marumo Gallants (-5), who are both sitting three points ahead of them.   

It is that time of the season where several club owners are interested in acquiring the status of others with Black Leopards understood to have bought the status of All Stars FC to remain in the Motsepe Foundation Championship despite their relegation, while Summerfields Dynamos owner Collen Naidoo also told this publication that he was looking at purchasing the Motsepe Foundation Championship status and he is ready to splash the cash, saying he is “tired of the ABC Motsepe League”.

With club statuses going up for sale, rumours started to swirl around the Team of Choice’s future, but Kadodia says there is no truth in those.

“That is nonsense,” Kadodia reacted to the iDiski Times when asked if his club is up for sale.

“We are not doing anything of that sort.

“These are decision makers making all these things to try and destabilise the club.”

This is not the first time such news has come as Lebogang Mokoena, a businessman from Bloemfontein, was interested in buying the Maritzburg United status in 2021. Mokoena’s aim was to revive Bloemfontein Celtic, who sold their status to Shauwn Mkhize at the beginning of the last season for Royal AM.

Mokoena even went as far as saying “Bloemfontein Celtic is back in the PSL”, much to the jubilation of fans in a small crowd in Bloemfontein, but nothing came to fruition.

At the time, Kadodia released a statement saying his club is not for sale and threatened to take legal action against Mr Mokoena for peddling lies about his club.

Maritzburg host Stellenbosch FC at Harry Gwala Stadium on Saturday in the penultimate of the game of the season, where a win is non-negotiable to keep their survival hopes alive. Failure to do that and will all but put them into the Motsepe Foundation Champions as the other teams they are fighting with, such as Chippa and Gallants, have the upper hand via their goal difference. 

Story by Robin-Duke Madlala (@duke_robin).