OptaJabu Newsletter #14: MTN8 QUARTERS & SEMIS DRAW
A review of the weekend action, and a look at the semis..
This past weekend, Cape Town City and Sundowns joined Orlando Pirates and Stellenbosch as 2024 MTN8 semi-finalists. 10-man Sundowns needed extra time to overcome Polokwane City at the Lucas Moripe Stadium on Sunday. The previous day, Cape Town City needed a late penalty to beat Sekhukhune 1-0 away from home in their clash. Three of the four semi-finalists may look familiar - Sundowns, Pirates, and Stellies were also among the semi-finalists last year. We shared some stats on the weekend.. Here are five stats and some details..
On 20 up for City..
Cape Town City were playing their 20th game in the Top8 (P20 W9 D5 L6), becoming only the eighth side in PSL history to amass 20 games in the competition (BP/SAA/MTN8)
Most Top8 games played in the PSL era:
55 - Kaizer Chiefs
54 - Orlando Pirates
53 - Mamelodi Sundowns
48 - Supersport Utd
25 - Bidvest Wits
21 - Moroka Swallows
21 - Ajax Cape Town
20 - Cape Town City
With two semi-finals to play, City will overtake Ajax & Swallows by the end of the month. They’ve finished in the Top8 every season since their (re)formation, so it kind of makes sense.
On the 4&7 Curse
No PSL team that finished the previous season in 4th or 7th has ever won the Top 8: Last season 4th was Sekhukhune United, who are out and 7th was SuperSport United, who were also eliminated last week. Which begs the question - what position is the lucky charm? And the answer is …… 2nd place is the most common winner of the TOP8 title the following season.
Most Top8 titles by league position:
7 Top8 titles: 2nd
5 titles: 5th
4 titles: 1st
3 titles: 6th & 3rd
2 titles: 8th
2 - Only two teams that finished 8th in the previous campaign have won the Top8 the following season: - 2003 Jomo Cosmos & 2005 Bloemfontein Celtic.
4 - Only four PSL title winners (out of 24) won the Top 8 the season after lifting the PSL title: - 2021 Sundowns , 2011 Pirates, 2007 Sundowns & 2002 Santos.
On Downs’ progress
16 - Sundowns have progressed to the semi-finals of the Top8 (BP/SAA/MTN8) for the 16th time, more than any other side in the PSL era.
Most semi-final appearances in the PSL era:
16 - Sundowns
15 - Kaizer Chiefs
14 - Orlando Pirates
11 - Supersport Utd
7 - Bidvest Wits
6 - Moroka Swallows
5 - Ajax Cape Town & Cape Town City
Just two titles to show for this though. Ouch.
On the semi-final draw
Stellies v Sundowns and Cape Town City v Orlando Pirates. Glad the Western Cape sides are separated for this one - means we get to watch all four semi-finalists in the space of a couple of weeks.
We’ll look at these in more detail later, but here’s one stat that sticks out: Eric Tinkler has won just once v Orlando Pirates in his coaching career (P13 W1 D6 L6).
On what are we working on this week?
Well, mostly appearances. The off-season is an ideal opportunity to focus on updating and importing data into our database, and we’ve been sitting on appearances for a while. Sundowns, Pirates, Chiefs and SuperSport are all sorted. Just the small matter of the other top-flight teams - City, Stellies, Arrows, AmaZulu etc.
It means for the “Big 4”, we have every player, their date of birth*, country of birth, starts & sub appearances etc. From this one can calculate, average age of Starting XIs, changes made to a starting XI, youngest and oldest players etc. There was a time Sundowns made 11 changes between games last season - we’ll look at such to see if it’s eer happened before. We missed the stat then, but we’ll be ready next time.
*We have ages for 99% of the players anyway, but enough to get some cool stats accurately. Got to practice some trickery when you’re missing one or two ages.
*Throwback image to 20 years ago