CAPS Utd’s Sithole heartbreak

to sign Takesure Chinyama from Dynamos, in their bid to secure the services of Sithole.
The huge transfer fee would also have been about four times what Pretoria University paid Dynamos to sign Zimbabwe international goalkeeper Washington Arubi.
Negotiations were at an advanced stage between the two clubs for Sithole’s reverse transfer to CAPS United, with a fee being agreed, that would have seen the Green Machine paying R1.2 million.
The fee is exactly the same fee that Sundowns paid to sign Sithole, on a five-year, deal from CAPS United last year.
The Harare giants only received a fraction of that transfer fee, 20 percent of the value, because they did not own the exclusive rights to the player, which belonged to Sithole’s management team.
It was the same management team that successfully negotiated the deal that resulted in Sundowns being forced to free Sithole from his contract, without a fee being paid, and getting the greenlight to join a club of his choice.
Sithole’s management team successfully negotiated that the player could be freed from his contract, and allowed to go for free, because of certain terms of the deal, including the fact that he had barely played for the Pretoria club in his first year.
Once his contract had been terminated, the Zimbabwe international forward returned home as a free agent and decided to revive his career at Dynamos instead of CAPS United, the team that laid the foundation for him to explode into one of the rising stars of domestic football.
While DeMbare are celebrating a huge coup, given that they are unlikely to pay more than the US$15 000 they rolled out to secure Takesure Chinyama’s services, when he arrived as a free agent earlier this year, there is a feeling of disappointment at CAPS United.
It stems from a sense of betrayal by a forward they believed was one of their family and whom they helped transform, from a virtually unknown quantity who had barely made a name for himself at Shooting Stars in the previous year, into one of the rising stars of Zimbabwe football.
That Sithole decided to join, of all teams, their bitter rivals Dynamos, is something  that hasn’t gone down well with the CAPS United family with Alois Bunjira, a Kepekepe legend, publicly questioning the player’s loyalty.
“I am very disappointed by Simba Sithole. Could he have been misled? That was a serious lack of loyalty,” thundered Bunjira, who is a sports presenter on ZiFM Stereo, on his Facebook page.
“Loyalty, loyalty, loyalty, those three           words pay in soccer, especially at the end of it all.”
The Herald can reveal today that CAPS United tried to break the bank and pay the biggest transfer fee, in the history of Zimbabwe football, just to try and bring Sithole back into the Green Machine family.
With their forwards misfiring all season, and the team badly in need of a trusted gunslinger, Makepekepe tried to lure Sithole back into their team and pay a huge fee, by Zimbabwean standards, to take him from Sundowns.
By paying the estimated US$150 000 for Sithole, CAPS United would have acquired the exclusive rights to the player, which they didn’t have when he had his first dance with the club last year.
CAPS United, though, acknowledged in their correspondence with Sundowns’ officials that they did not have exclusive rights to signing Sithole, if the player decided to return home, and the striker would have to make his choices.
The correspondence also shows that CAPS United became worried, after Sundowns advised them that Sithole’s management team were trying to force free urgency status for the striker, that the Zimbabwe international forward could be taken elsewhere.
Their fears have since been confirmed as Sithole has now joined their bitter rivals Dynamos.
Sithole’s management team includes Ziyambi Ziyambi, a former CAPS United team manager, and respected local football agent, Gibson Mahachi, who also manages DeMbare hotshot Denver Mukamba.
Mahachi also negotiated the deal that took Cuthbert Malajila from Dynamos to Maritzburg United.
Correspondence between CAPS United vice-president, Farai Jere, and Sundowns’ general manager, Kenneth Makhanya, shows that the two parties came very close to striking a deal for Sithole to return into the Green Machine fold.
One of the text messages from Makhanya shows Sundowns accepting the proposal from CAPS United for Sithole’s transfer to the Green Machine.
“Mr Jere, we accept your proposal for the transfer of Sithole from Sundowns back to CAPS on the understanding that you agree for us to recover the balance from future transactions between us,” wrote Makhanya.
Jere quickly responded:
“Mr Makhanya, we are interested, can you confirm the figure?”
The Sundowns’ general manager duly responded:
“We accept your proposal for R800 000 transfer fee now and for the R400 000 to be recouped in future transfers,” wrote Makhanya.
The two parties continued to discuss the proposed deal and Jere, crucially, asks his Sundowns’ counterpart if the player is interested in coming back home and, if so, returning to CAPS United.
“Is Simba prepared to come to CAPS United?” asks Jere. “Otherwise, we are wasting our time.”
Makhanya then tells the CAPS United vice-president that he will ask the player if he wants to go back to the Green Machine.
“I will ask him,” wrote Makhanya. “Ziyambi has engaged Gibson (Mahachi) to represent the boy.
“I propose we finalise the agreement asap (as soon as possible).
“The whole point of the matter is simple, CAPS table a written proposal to us. We engage the player on it.
“At the moment Ziyambi thinks he can get a free clearance and we say that is not how it works.”
Sundowns eventually freed Sithole from his clearance and the striker is now back home to lead the Dynamos frontline.
Jere said the fact that they were ready to smash the local transfer record, and become the first local side to buy a player from a South African Premiership club, was proof of their commitment to make CAPS United competitive.
“We lost out on Simba even when we had made the first move and we were prepared to pay a fortune to get him back, not as a player loaned to us like in the previous arrangement, but as one who now belonged to our club,” said Jere.
“We felt that Simba would bring something good in our team and that is why we                     were ready to pay such a huge amount to               get him back but, obviously, we could only bid and the decision to where he would            sign lay entirely with the player and his managers.
“There is, indeed, a sense of disappointment that he hasn’t only decided not to              join us but joined our biggest rivals but maybe the arrangements there, in terms of his contract and who owns him, suit him better than our offer where we wanted to buy him outright and he would belong to us and noone else.
“We live in the real world and we know that we won’t get everything and everyone that we want but as the club’s leaders we must be seen by those who support us that we are trying to strengthen the team and Simba was one of our targets.
“Life goes on and we don’t hold any ill-feelings for the boy for choosing our rivals because he gave us a good time when he played for us and we are forever thankful for that.”