Fifa hail local refs

The World soccer governing body’s instructors — Carlos Henriques and Felix Tangawarima — are in the coun­try for an Elite referees course which began in the capital last Friday and has been running at Prince Edward School.
Another course for the match asses­sors also ran concurrently with that of the referees but it ended on Sunday night.
Fifa referees development officer Henriques who is no stranger to Zim­babwe having been in the country on a number of occasions on the mission to improve the standards of officiating yesterday expressed satisfaction with the 34-member class of elite referees they have been taking through their paces since Friday.
The South African national noted with satisfaction that local instructors such as Wilfred Mukuna, Gladmore Muzambi, Brighton Mudzamiri, Sabelo Sibindi-Maphosa and Joseph Mususa had worked hard to produce a new crop of younger and enthusiastic referees “who have shown great potential to do well’’.
Henriques speaking on the sidelines of a rigorous two-hour practical exer­cise on the contentious offside rule said he had also noted local referees did not have much challenges with the theoret­ical aspects of their profession but needed polishing  up on the technical and practical component.
“Once again we are back in this coun­try for an elite referees’ course. Although it is a bit early to make a final assessment since the course is still run­ning and ends on Friday, there is a good improvement on theory and we are impressed with the match commission­ers too. In fitness they did well but we had a few casualties and quite upset that one of the Fifa referees (Pamela Chi­waya) failed the test. but it is not the end of the world she will come back and succeed,’’ Henriques said.
Henriques also noted that the local referees needed to improve on their concentration in match situations.
“We have been doing the technical aspect of the offside law and I must say there are few areas to polish on like the lack of concentration but it shows that local instructors are working because we have seen some improvement.
There is a lot of young blood and we are seeing improvement in the class­room . . . they go through nine tests of theory and the three tests that have been held so far have shown a huge improvement.
“In some countries we do not find such an improvement because they only start to work when they know that Fifa are coming but here we will defi­nitely see an improvement even on the standard of the football being played in the country.
“I believe that better refereeing means better football. What I have seen this time around is a disciplined and dedicated crop of referees. In the past Zimbabwe was a huge supplier of refer­ees and here we have a group for the future, it is a group that represent the country well,’’ Henriques said.
Former Zimbabwe Referee of the Year Tangawarima concurred with Henriques and said the discipline and dedication shown by the course partici­pants had left them with great opti­mism that the good times will soon roll again for local referees.
“It is quite a disciplined group that is willing to learn. Theoretically there is no problem but it is on the field of play where we are trying to correct the mis­takes they make.
“We had 30 assessors from Friday to Sunday and we had a practical session so assessing the CAPS United against Highlanders match at Rufaro and each often assessors wrote his report on the performance of the match officials.
“I must say the reports were impres­sive. Now we need to improve the tech­nical, practical situations on the field. There is evidence that they are working hard with the referees.
“We are also happy with the fact that the age group here is that if youngsters. We had only fur failures in the male cat­egory and two in women one of them Pamela of all people and the other Faith Sibanda from Bulawayo. Of the four male failures, all of them are first timers so you can see that of those that have been here before there is improvement,’’ Tangawarima said.