admin
need of a huge financial injection.
The Trust — who inherited a US$4 million debt from Zifa and are now directly responsible for funding all national teams’ activities — say they can’t do it alone and want all patriotic fans to donate a dollar to the national game.
The Trust is made up of captains of industry and include its chairperson Tshinga Dube and his deputy, Mbada Diamonds’ chief executive Patience Khumalo, and yesterday they launched the ambitious project which they believe will help rehabilitate the game.
The launch of the project comes just days before Zimbabwe host Egypt in a 2014 World Cup qualifier at the National Sports Stadium on June 9.
Yesterday, Dube said they had managed, in a short space of three months, to mobilise resources for trips such as the 2014 World Cup qualifier in Egypt and road trips to Zambia and Malawi for friendly internationals.
They also secured land for Zifa near the Harare International Airport.
The task has become too big for them and they urgently need help.
But Dube told the media, at a briefing in Harare yesterday, that they needed the contribution of the entire nation for them to make a positive contribution to the national game.
“The dollar for football project is meant to mobilise material, human and financial resources for Zimbabwean football,” said Dube.
“Football is the most popular national sport whose beauty touches the entire nation, from Zambezi to Limpopo.
“The Zimbabwe Football Trust appeals to all patriotic and football-loving Zimbabweans, local and those living in the Diaspora, to spare at least one US$1 or its equivalent in material form.
“The contributions will go a long way in rehabilitating the game as well as opening new frontiers for football excellence.
“Once resourced, Zimbabwe football will scale heights never scaled before.
“We are appealing to every patriotic Zimbabwean to contribute generously to this cause. I don’t think we have taken our sport seriously, maybe in future our President will have a Sports Ministry, so that Sports can have its own budget.
“Education Ministry is quite big on its own and is demanding so in the end there won’t be enough attention for Sports.”
Dube said national football was reeling from a mountain of debt and the Trust and the Zifa board, on their own, could not provide a dramatic solution to the challenges.
“Zifa is owing US$4 million and that is nothing, that can be wiped out if we know what we are doing,” said Dube.
“We have many banks in the country, they can stagger US$200 000 each to make US$1 million as we have a number of urgent assignments.
“Because of the time factor, we are appealing to banks to give us this facility then we will pay back as long as we put our house in order but for now it would be difficult to raise such kind of money.
“We need to immediately raise US$1 million, not in cash but as a facility, to fulfil some of the fixtures, we are nine days away from the Egypt tie and we haven’t got the money for the match.
“We will play Egypt at home, Guinea away and Mozambique here and all these fixtures require money and the time is even too short us the Football Trust to raise the money, otherwise we won’t meet our target and it would be like we are failures.”
Dube said their grand project was looking at raising funds to service key areas such as the Zifa debt, administration, development programmes, national teams, merchandise as well as sponsorship of leagues and the FA Cup, among other things.
The Football Trust have earmarked a number of activities such as road shows, advertorials, television and radio shows and have already engaged the cellphone network providers and secured a short code.
They will also be able to use the EcoCash facility for people wishing to make deposits.
Dube said for accountability purposes they were encouraging companies, who may want to inject funds into the project, to do so by paying directly to the service providers.
“We need to get support from the Ministry, to help us get money from the banks for example with Egypt coming here, we need accommodation and will just give them the invoice and they pay directly to avoid leakages,” said Dube.
“If we need air tickets, they pay directly to the travel agent as we don’t want the bank giving anyone hard cash.
“It should be just a facility and we should not see the colour of that money, it is not ours and by doing this no one will be tempted and fail to account for it.”
The Football Trust called on all Zimbabweans to be united so that they help resuscitate a game which has been choked by financial problems.
Dube also called for the media houses to help their cause by flighting advertisements of their appeal, for free, so that every Zimbabwean is aware of their plight.
“Any Zimbabwean would want to see the flag flying high in soccer competitions,” said Dube. “Zimbabwe used to do very well but, of late, we have really sunk and no longer have the standards like our North and Western counterparts.
“Even our players are doing very well in various parts of the world such as South Africa and Europe, but we are failing to qualify for major tournaments.
“Finance has become our biggest problem and we have suffered the embarrassment caused by poverty.
“Sometimes we have even failed to fulfil our fixtures, we should be a proud country, not a banana republic and the only way is to appeal to the fans.”
Online Reporter