Cape Town - Maritzburg United chairperson Farook Kadodia says the club are forced to sell their top players virtually every season due to a lack of commercial sponsors.

After a season in which they barely survived relegation, Maritzburg sold Fortune Makaringe and Siphelele Ndlovu to Orlando Pirates.

Whereas after the previous campaign in 2017/18 - star player Lebohang Maboe was sold to Mamelodi Sundowns.

Other high profile departures over the years include Evans Rusike, Rudolph Bester, Cuthbert Malajila and Rheece Evans.

Kadodia said: "We made our footprint in the PSL way back after we were promoted against FC AK 11 years ago. We've been having many challenges, economically a lot with the lack of commercial sponsors. We need to trade properly and also we need to fulfill our obligations.

"Our obligations are committing to social cohesion around KZN, especially Pietermaritzburg surrounding areas, promote a nation building brand as you always see on home games on Friday nights. All of that costs a lot of money.

"The reality is that the existence of this club is purely because of the sales we've done in the past. I would've liked to embrace players for five years like many teams in Europe but we can't. We have to think about the business side of it, we will always develop and sell players for us to survive."