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FOUR years ago Eric Rosen was toasting the success of his football project after Motor Action were crowned champions of the domestic Premiership. It’s a project that had taken 11 years, to make, but the Mighty Bulls had finally reached the Promised Land after beating heavyweights Dynamos to land the premiership.
Everything was looking good, they had a ticket to the CAF Champions League to play the best teams on the continent and, unlike most of the other clubs in the domestic Premiership, Motor Action also had their own football stadium. But, today, everything lies in ruins — the Mighty Bulls have been disbanded, after their relegation from the Premiership last year, and the company that provided the money that oiled their machinery, Motor Action, is now bankrupt.
High Court judge Justice Loice Matanda-Moyo granted Rosen’s company, Eric Rosen (Pvt) Ltd, Trading as Motor Action, a provisional liquidation order after the Harare businessman filed for bankruptcy under a wave of lawsuits and writs of executions after running into debts and failing to settle statutory requirements.
Rosen blames the dollarisation of the economy in 2009 and bank loans that he acquired to sponsor Motor Action FC’s participation in the CAF Champions League in 2011 and CAF Confederation Cup, the following year, for the problems that haunted his firm and, finally, brought it down. It’s tragic that a football club, which was representing our nation and flying our flag proudly on the continent just two years ago, has now collapsed and the company that was sponsoring it has also crumbled. Motor Action FC are not alone in this group. Monomotapa, another football club that was sponsored by two individuals, were the champions of our Premiership, just six years ago, but when they were relegated last year, the club collapsed.
Of the 16 football clubs that have been relegated since 2010 — Lengthens, Douglas Warriors, FC Victoria, Zimbabwe Saints, Shooting Stars, Kiglon Bird, Blue Rangers, Hardbody, Quelaton, Tripple B, Monomotapa, Motor Action, Black Mambas, Gunners, Masvingo United and Bantu Rovers — only four have survived and remain active today.
What has become very clear is that the landscape is now very hostile. It’s not even a coincidence that the two teams that have already been relegated from the Premiership — Chiredzi FC and Bantu Rovers — are part of a small band of clubs that are still being run by individuals who are still finding their way into the top-flight league. Neither is it a mere coincidence, too, that the clubs that have managed to challenge the two traditional heavyweights, Dynamos and Highlanders, who continue to benefit immensely from their sponsorship deal with BancABC, for the league championship in the last three years have had strong corporate backing — Harare City, FC Platinum, Chicken Inn and ZPC Kariba.
Even CAPS United, a giant of domestic football with a huge following second only to Dynamos in the capital and the third biggest team, in terms of support base, in the country, have also been feeling the pinch, as Twine Phiri struggles to raise funds to finance the club, and on Saturday, their players, not for the first time this season, staged a revolt over unpaid dues.
Twenty years ago, six Harare businessmen — Ronnie Chihota, Joel Salifu (late), Ginger Chinguwa, Forbes Chitava, Joe Musenda and Ben Muchedzi — started a domestic football revolution when they acquired the franchise of Black Mambas and sent their Blackpool team into battle, for the domestic Premiership title, in 1994. That year they won the Castle Cup, earning a ticket to play in the CAF Cup of Cup Winners, the following year where their team, known for its imported kits and colourful fans, made history by becoming the first Zimbabwean football club to reach the semi-finals of a CAF inter-club tournament.
Blackpool also challenged Dynamos, toe-to-toe, in a riveting battle for the league championship that year and finished with the same number of points, 58, and same goal difference, as their rivals only for the Glamour Boys to win the title by virtue of having scored more goals during the campaign.
That Blackpool team set the foundation, and standards, for clubs, owned by individuals, who followed and, as fate would have it, Rosen acquired that club’s franchise, in 1999, after the six directors decided that they could no longer afford to foot the bills of running a top-flight football team.
Fifteen years after Chihota and his colleagues walked away from the domestic football, we have had four teams run by individuals — Amazulu, CAPS United, Monotapa and Gunners — who have managed to win the Premiership title and representing the country in the CAF Champions League.
But, as Rosen’s current woes have shown, the environment has become very hostile for individuals to play the dual role of keeping their companies afloat and also financing their teams in the domestic Premiership.
The Ministry of Sport, Arts and Culture, and Zifa must brainstorm on ways to save smaller teams.
Online Reporter