adminAS the Zifa election season gets to its climax tomorrow, the nation this week woke to news that 1984 Soccer Star of the Year and Zifa presidential aspirant James Takavada saying it is time to give former footballers a chance to take charge of the game.
Being one of the four candidates vying for the troubled association’s presidency with a well known football playing career background, Takavada challenged the councillors to consider voting for former footballers at tomorrow’s elections to choose a new Zifa president.
For those that might have not known him, Takavada has played professional football for Gweru United, Tornadoes, and Darryn Tornadoes.
In 1984, he was voted the Soccer Star of the Year when he turned out for Ziscosteel.
He has also been in the national team technical structures when he worked under Wieslaw Grabowski and also served as assistant to Clemence Westerhof.
Locally, he has guided Shabanie in 2001 and 2002 when he was the technical advisor.
Takavada is competing for the top Zifa job with businessman Philip Chiyangwa, long-serving football administrator Leslie Gwindi and ex-Zifa chairman Trevor Carelse-Juul.
Be that as it may, it is no secret that former footballers have been sidelined from the game for too long even though examples of former footballers doing well in football management are not far away from us.
One needs not go beyond neighbouring Zambia to find evidence for that.
Regrettably, former footballers have been sidelined from management of the game while Zimbabwean football standards have fallen over the years because of poor leadership which had gradually been deviating from focusing on real football matters.
Surely Zimbabwe does not deserve to be sitting outside the top 100 on the FIFA rankings given the talent that we all know abounds in the country.
Today, Zimbabwe has no stars to talk about. Imagine we are still talking about Stix Mtizwa, Moses Chunga and other yesteryear stars.
This is why we take sides with Takavada when he says Zimbabwe’s current football mess does not need money alone, but people who are grounded in football.
“I don’t know why people have this way of thinking that football is about anybody who can come in and go, but when it comes to other professions like engineering, accounting, law, journalism, we really need the guy who has seen it in the trenches.
“It’s very unfortunate that in football we are not doing that.
“If I may go back to history, before 1980 the people who have been running football are the ones who had played football, coached football and had administered football and we never had such problems as we are having now.’’
It is also good to see some former football stars rallying behind their own.
Former players Ernest Kamba, Stanford “Stix” Mtizwa, Eric Aisam and Misheck Chidzambwa were some of the notable faces who attended Takavada’s election campaign launch and pledged their support to the former football great.
Therefore, it only makes sense for the councillors to give it to former football players and after all it’s only two years for the new board and why not give them that chance and see what they can do as ex-footballers.
There is no doubt that a lot needs to be done towards the provision of infrastructure and grassroots development but that can only be done by someone who understands the value of infrastructure and grassroots development in football development.
It is not in question that Zifa needs to cleanse its image and rebuild the trust with the corporate world but that can also be achieved only if we have people that have football at heart and are not mere chancers out to make either cash or a name out of the game.
Just like Takavada, our plea at this moment is that councillors give former players a chance probably just for the two years and assess them.
Online Reporter