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Ricky Zililo, Senior Sports Reporter
ZIFA acting president Gift Banda says the nation needs to be patient as they are working on putting structures that will ensure Zimbabwe returns to international football with a strong foundation.
Following the recalling of Zifa president Felton Kamambo and three other board members, Philemon Machana, Bryton Malandule and Stanley Chapeta, in April, the assembly gave Banda the mandate to lead the association’s executive committee.
Banda says Zimbabwe should use its suspension from international football to establish developmental plans that will guide football operations.
Zifa has started engaging Fifa on reinstatement.
It also has the constitutional review matter on cards, with the Zifa Restructuring Committee helping out with data collation.
Banda and his team have also been reaching out to stakeholders, most recently they met former Zifa presidents Philip Chiyangwa and Cuthbert Dube.
“The reason for the engagements with former presidents is that they did something good during their tenures and there is something that we can tap from their wisdom. We will meet with other past presidents because football is a team sport and as such, you can’t play it alone.
“So, in our quest to make Zimbabwean football great, we must ensure that the constitution we will have is for the betterment of football, not individuals. We’ve noted with concern that almost every leader who came to Zifa before us sought to amend the constitution to suit them, not the sport. That should end and luckily, we’ve got time to have a proper constitution while working our way back to global football,” Banda said.
He could not commit to timeframes for Zimbabwe’s reinstatement to international football saying: “We can’t really put timeframes because it’s not in our hands, but we are expressing to the powers-that-be that we are doing all our things according to the constitution and now that we have opened the avenues of communication (with Fifa) that were not there before, we are upbeat.
What I know is that Fifa has never instituted a life ban on a member, but my question is, are we really ready to play international football? Even if we are to have our suspension lifted, we don’t have facilities to use and we can’t have Zimbabwe playing its matches outside her borders.
“We have to defend our pride right within our borders. We need to see how best we can put more money together; how best we can do in order to have our stadia ready for us to play international football competitively. We also have to make sure that when we return, our teams from junior national teams up to the senior national teams are competitive and that can only be done by having proper structures.”
Banda says they are in unison that to have successful results with senior teams, everything starts from having a strong foundation at the grassroots level, which are the junior teams.
Part of establishing the foundation at the development stage is to re-establish provincial junior teams that will periodically compete to help Zifa come up with a proper database to follow players’ development and weed out age cheating.
“It is in junior competitions where we can infuse a national football philosophy. Look at England, the coach with the senior national team is the person who developed those players. But this side we want immediate results, with each coach coming up with his own kind of play and experimenting with the senior team.
Right now, I can tell you that the technical director is busy at work with his committee, so that when we start, we are starting afresh. You will see the setting up of provincial technical directors’ offices which will spearhead technical development areas at that stage and ensure that programmes are implemented.
“For junior age group teams, from Under-13s to Under-17s, those are school going kids and if we can work hand in glove with Naph and Nash as well as the junior leagues, then we can wipe out age cheating because we start monitoring and tracing talent from the grassroots up to senior teams.
We should put structures that are biased towards the development of the game in the country. Another problem we had is that when there’s a tournament, we bring in a Premier Soccer League coach, who is result oriented when, in fact, junior football is about developing and nurturing players in as much as you want success. This is what leads to age cheating because he wants results because he doesn’t want his CV to be damaged,” Banda said.
He questioned the deliberate flouting of the constitution, in reference to the failure of having a National First Division.
“Why are we relegating four Premiership teams instead of, maybe one or two? Why are we going against the constitution because what the guiding document says is that there shall be a National First Division, which should be a feeder to the Premier Soccer League.
The turnover from the PSL is worrisome and teams should compete in the National First Division to show their seriousness of competing in the topflight. Long back we used to have two regions, Northern and Southern and football was competitive.
“Without disrespecting people doing a sterling job in creating jobs within football, I think it is us the custodians of football letting them down by going against the constitution. Some of these things might appear harmless and meaningless, but they have a huge bearing in the outcome of our game,” Banda said. — @ZililoR
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