Black Leopards to return bigger and better - Chief Thidiela

Leopards, now among the oldest existing professional football clubs in the country, were last month banished to the amateur ranks after finishing bottom of the 2022/23 Motsepe Foundation Championship.

However, they have since purchased the first-division status of All Stars FC and will immediately return to the same league for the 2023/24 campaign.

"What I'm saying is we will have Black Leopards in the Motsepe Foundation Championship, it will be participating as Black Leopards. It is the Thidiela sons who've agreed and went out as speculated, we then purchased the status of Cape Town All Stars," he said. 

We've also managed to get permission to change the name to use Black Leopards. Obviously, we had to go negotiate with the old Black Leopards to get the rights obviously to use their signage, their names and their emblems."

'Chief', as he is affectionately known, highlighted the important role Leopards have in the Vhembe region while assuring adjustments to their operating model would be made to ensure they don't suffer the same fate of dropping to the lower leagues.

"Obviously there are many changes that we will need to then bring in because we feel that our community and people of Limpopo rely on us. They rely on Black Leopards to make ends meet in different areas. I think it gives us satisfaction as a family to say there is little that we are doing for the community," Thidiela explained.

"There was a lot of fighting and arguing within the family, our issue was that we need to adjust some of the things. We need to be honest to say, we can't go and do things the same way that we've done because that will only mean that the results will probably be the same."