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Cape Town - SuperSport United coach Gordon Igesund says he needed to look overseas to improve his squad because PSL rivals don't want to sell players to each other.
The former Bafana Bafana coach brought in a number of foreign players over the last 12 months, including Jeremy Brockie and Michael Boxall from New Zealand, as well as Australian Isaka Cernak, before bringing South Africa's own Dean Furman back from England.
He indicated the reason he had to look overseas was because most of the good players in South Africa were already committed to clubs that weren't prepared to sell to a rival, and he was not willing to spend money on sub-par footballers.
"We target top players and the top [Premiership] clubs are not going to release their players. So, we don't even bother to enquire about them," Igesund told Goal website.
"Clubs don't want to release their best players to other teams."
When ask if it was a trend that South African clubs were beginning to look abroad instead of trusting local talent, Igesund disagreed.
"I don't think that it is a fair thing to say. If a club is looking for a specific player and they can't get him for whatever reason, or because the other clubs don't want to release them, then sometimes you do look elsewhere.
"For example, if you are looking for a top holding midfield player and all the top clubs have the best ones then you don't want to go for the third best or fourth best.
"So, if you can't get him in this country then you have to look elsewhere."
