adminCRITICS have always maintained that the Confederation of African Football has an institutionalised bias against non-Arab and non-French speaking countries. There have been a lot of out outbursts from countries in the Southern part of the continent who have complained of unfair treatment from Caf, with Zimbabwean teams in Caf tournaments getting a raw deal on a number of occasions.
With the exception of South Africa and Angola, most associations in the region are living from hand to mouth and are facing a lot of challenges, some with huge debts like our own Zifa.
Under such difficult circumstances, one would expect the continental body to be alive to the challenges facing their affiliates and try to assist. And assistance does not mean giving out money or technical support only, it can also mean coming up with a workable and cheaper formula when coming up with preliminary fixtures for Caf competitions and assigning match officials.
There were some suggestions in the past that teams that take part in the Caf Champions League or Confederation Cup should first of all face teams from the region to minimise costs of travel, but that has not been the case. It becomes too expensive for teams to play the preliminary stages or first round against teams from up North, when such stages of the competition can be played by neighbours with those winning progressing to face opponents from other parts of Africa where stakes are also high.
The latest case involving match officials for the aborted match between Zimbabwe and Zambia is another case in point. The match officials were from Cameroon, far away from the region and it certainly defies logic why a low key qualifier for a Chan tournament should cost the national association a lot of money in flying in referees, when they just played more competitive World Cup and African Cup of Nations qualifiers. The Chan tournament finals will be held next year in South Africa in January and the tournament, played along the lines of the African Cup of Nations tournament, is only for players based in their native countries.
Last week Zifa wrote to Caf asking them to reconsider the appointment of referees from Cameroon as it would be expensive to fly in the referees from such a faraway country. But Caf declined to make any changes.
To make matters worse, the match officials failed to arrive in the country on time and were only in Harare two days after the scheduled match, after being holed up in Kenya where connection flights became a challenge after the airport was gutted by fire late last week. What it means now is that both Zimbabwe and Zambia will have to prepare twice for one match and incur double costs and fans are not spared as some had already paid to watch the game on Sunday before it was called off.
The national association also spent an additional $55 000 on camping of players and hosting of visitors, apart from the expenses of keeping the local boys in camp. While it was unlikely that they would recoup that from the gate takings, hopes were high that they would at least recover the bulk of the expenditure but it is now certain the match tomorrow will result in a loss in financial terms.
Close to 5 000 fans had paid to enter the stadium and were left disappointed after the cancellation of the match. Zifa, however, made contingency plans to avail complementary tickets to those fans for this Sunday’s rescheduled match.
The quartet of match referee, Juenkou Wandji, first assistant, Noupue Nguegoue, second assistant, Lambi J Fuanta and reserve referee Nde Christopher Ade all from Cameroon touched down at the Harare international airport in the afternoon on Tuesday and will stay in Zimbabwe until Sunday when the match is expected to finally take place.
This will be an added expense on the broke national association as they have to foot the hotel, food bills as well as daily allowances for the referees, which by the way do not come cheap since its a continental tie.
Zifa chief executive officer Jonathan Mashingaidze confirmed their arrival.
“The referees have finally arrived, we will have to keep them here until Sunday when the match will be played,” said Mashingaidze.
Zifa informed Caf about the arrival of the referees and the continental body advised the local administration to take care of the officials until Sunday. After missing flights that would have seen them arrive in Zimbabwe either on Saturday or on Sunday afternoon, the referees were battling to make the trip and only succeeded on Tuesday.
African football legend Kalusha Bwalya, who is also the president of the Football Association of Zambia, questioned the game’s administration on the continent after the cancellation of the match, saying with better planning this debacle could have been avoided.
“I think we could obviously avoid it had we done our logistic planning earlier. It was made worse by getting officials from as far as West Africa and I think in the future assignments we could be able to get referees from our region. Again we are not the people who make decisions and we can’t choose referees. We are playing in a competition and we have to stick to the rules of the game. We have to accept and regret especially for the boys who have trained hard for the match. It’s one of those things that happen in football and we have to bear it move on. We are going back to Zambia and come back on Friday.”
He also bemoaned Caf’s decision to prevent the South African match officials from replacing their Cameroonian counterparts.
“I think it’s a big inconvenience to everybody, the Zimbabwe and Zambia national teams together with the supporters locally and those who have traveled. The match was primed to have taken place today (Sunday) but unfortunately because of the referees’ non-appearance it was called off.
We had a meeting with Zifa and the match commissioner to look at all the options and it was agreed that the match be postponed to next weekend.
It’s a very regrettable situation because Caf could not give us replacements to use and I think under those circumstances it was best to defer the match to next week. Logistically; accommodation, transport and everything it’s a lot but at the end of the day football has to be played,” he was quoted as saying by a local daily.
This is not the first time that Caf has come under fire from Zimbabweans. When FC Platinum played in the Champions league, Caf barred the Zvishavane side from using their home ground in the second round, after allowing them to host opponents from Swaziland in the opening round.
FC Platinum had to play Sudanese club El Merreikh in Harare, after Caf said Zvishavane had no suitable hotels . Although Platinum had offered to fly El Merreikh from Harare to an airstrip in Zvishavane, Al Merreikh refused to accept the arrangement as they wanted to use commercial flights rather than chartered ones.
Zifa accused Caf of bias, alleging that rules were often flouted when its clubs and national teams play away.
For comments and contributions email [email protected]. You can also follow this writer on Twitter and Facebook.
Online Reporter