{"id":13701,"date":"2022-04-29T09:48:07","date_gmt":"2022-04-29T09:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/matlama-crowned-2021-22-vpl-champions"},"modified":"2022-04-29T10:13:58","modified_gmt":"2022-04-29T10:13:58","slug":"matlama-crowned-2021-22-vpl-champions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/matlama-crowned-2021-22-vpl-champions","title":{"rendered":"Matlama crowned 2021\/22 VPL Champions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Lesotho. <\/strong><\/span>With just four matches remaining Matlama FC has been crowned the Vodacom Premier League (VPL) 2021\/22 champions. Matlama are currently sitting on position one with 63 points followed by Bantu on 2nd place with 52 points and three<\/p>\n<p>games remaining. As such, Matlama is deemed to have higher chances to once again win the league after leaving the seat for Bantu in the previous season.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe mighty blues\u201d as popularly referred to, set a good margin to seal their 11th league championship after their last<\/p>\n<p>postponed match with Manonyane on Sunday and it is the first in history of Lesotho to be the club to reach this milestone. Matlama is among the massive teams in the Premier<\/p>\n<p>League and the most successful club in the Mountain Kingdom. The team was established in 1932. It has previously won the following leagues; 1969, 1974, 1977, 1978,<\/p>\n<p>1982, 1986, 1988, 1992, 2003, 2010, 2019 and eventually to win 2022. Despite the eruption of Covid-19 which lead to the lockdown<\/p>\n<p>in March 2020 where sporting activities were paused, Matlama made a comeback by giving their all to the game when some sporting codes including football were<\/p>\n<p>officially allowed to carry on with their day-to-day activities earlier this year. The mighty blues had set a good record from the on-set, having lost only three matches against Linare, LDF and Lifofane since the<\/p>\n<p>commencement of the League. The first loss was 2-0 against Linare last year in May and 2-1 against both LDF and Lifofane. It was also in the same match with Lifofane where Matlama brought<\/p>\n<p>disappointment to its supporters by losing 2-1 to the team that was to eventually face relegation if Matlama won but rather chose to give their three points away.<\/p>\n<p>The other challenging match was between them and LCS where they shared spoils, this was after the goal by LCS, and Matlama managing to make an equalization of 1-1 from a conner kick by their striker Lerotholi<\/p>\n<p>Zwane. The match was of huge challenge to Matlama due to experienced players within LCS, of which most were in the national team \u201cLikuena\u201d. As for other matches that \u201cThe Mighty Blues\u201d played,<\/p>\n<p>they extinguished themselves that their ball possession, counter attack, overlapping, defending deep, offside traps as well as direct attacks were unique and much better compared to most Premier League teams.<\/p>\n<p>Their best score was when they whipped Sefotha-Fotha 4-0 and won 3-0 against both Swallows and Likhopo. In an interview with Informative Sport, Premier League Management Committee (PLMC) Chairman Mosa Zane Seoli disclosed<\/p>\n<p>that Bantu was to reach the target of 61 points, which was impossible as they have only two matches left. However, Matlama Head Coach Mothobi Mochobi illustrated that they could be happy if they were to be 2021\/22 champions since they have set good margin for the 2021\/22 VPL season. Mothobi stated that they had walked a long journey, the reward is what is left for them.<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\">Lesotho<\/a> Follow <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/\">Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Lesotho. With just four matches remaining Matlama FC has been crowned the Vodacom Premier League (VPL) 2021\/22 champions. Matlama are currently sitting on position one with 63 points followed by Bantu on 2nd place with 52 points and three games remaining. As such, Matlama is deemed to have higher chances to once again [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":13700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8,17,16],"tags":[233,246,1285,245],"class_list":["post-13701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-homepage-english","category-sport","category-twitter","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-lesotho","tag-champions","tag-lesotho"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Matlama crowned 2021\/22 VPL Champions - Lesotho<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"With just four matches remaining Matlama FC has been crowned the Vodacom Premier League (VPL) 2021\/22 champions. 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