OPINION: Tight but not competitive: The PSL title race illusion
If the PSL title race were a university class, it would be one without a single Distinction student.
Four teams locked on 28 points looks dramatic—until you realise they’ve already played 15 games.
Twenty‑eight points from a possible 45 is a 62.2% return, just 1.86 points per game. With more than a third of the season gone, that pedestrian rate already foretells how our champions will stumble on the continental stage.
Take Highlanders: a side that drew its first seven matches and had just one win after 10 games, yet they sit only six points off the summit—not because they surged, but because the leaders keep stuttering. Caps United, level with Hardrock at the top, collected a miserable six points from six games in May.
In the last three seasons, log leaders had 31 points after 15 games—Highlanders in 2023, FC Platinum in 2024, Mwos in 2025. That’s an average of just 2.06 points per game. This year’s leaders trail that modest benchmark by three.
The race is tight only because the frontrunners are crawling, not because competition is fierce.
The continental verdict is already in. Ngezi Platinum Stars (2024) and Simba Bhora (2025) were both eliminated at the preliminary stage of the CAF Champions League. These were our finest products, yet they couldn’t survive the opening exchanges. If that’s the ceiling, then today’s congested table is not strength—it’s collective mediocrity.
Yes, the game is louder than ever. New money flooding in, the online machine turning every fixture into an “event.” But beneath the noise, the foundation is crumbling. There is no transfer market generating revenue, no meaningful TV deal, no merchandise economy. The flamboyant investment funds wages and spectacle, but builds no ecosystem. When the music stops, little will remain.
That is what the title race reflects: not refined machines pushing each other to the limit, but underdeveloped sides propped up by unconventional money which doesnt conform to standard financial principles.
The table looks dramatic. Reality does not. The champion will arrive at continental competition underprepared and outclassed.
A congested log is not proof of our top flight league’s strength—it is a warning sign.
