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when world soccer governing body Fifa conduct an in-depth assessment of the state of football in the country.
Top Fifa officials Ashford Mamelodi and Brendan Menton arrived in the country on Saturday and immediately got down to business the following day as they began a series of no-holds-barred meetings with different stakeholders, which are central to their organisational review of Zifa.
Mamelodi is the Fifa development officer for Southern Africa while Menton is the world body’s management consultant who has been helping to build the capacities of national associations on the continent and was recently in Liberia and Ethiopia.
Fifa, using a team of experts, have undertaken a professionalisation project with African associations aimed at strengthening their capacities after reviewing their organisational structures. The performance-based project is also aimed at uplifting the structure at Zifa so that it meets the levels, which are acceptable by Fifa standards.
These include the appointments of more key staff that will complement chief executive Jonathan Mashingaidze and his secretariat as the association seeks to turn over a new leaf.
Mamelodi and Menton were in the country in November last year when they met with the entire Zifa board during a weekend retreat in Kariba after which the association came up with a resolution to restructure their secretariat.
Cuthbert Dube’s leadership also made a passionate appeal to Fifa for financial and material assistance in their ambitious re-branding exercise.
During their latest visit, Mamelodi and Menton will meet with a cross-section of the game’s key stakeholders, who include government officials, club administrators, local football’s sponsors, the media, technical staff, finance and marketing staff, management consultants, information technology staff and the association’s different sub-committees.
Menton said they would also draw up some recommendations after their fact-finding mission with the Fifa consultant remaining optimistic that Zifa would have achieved success in their turnaround programme inside the next two years.
“We are here for a Fifa capacity building programme on the management and technical areas of football, we are here as a follow-up to the Kariba declaration which the Zifa board came up with.
“We want to assess the current status of football in the country administratively and technically and we will make recommendations to Zifa after this.
“The technical assessment will be done in two weeks but we will work with Zifa in the next two years to help them implement the organisational review and there will be exchange of correspondence and much more follow-up but there things that Zifa on their part ought to do for this to succeed. We will not only talk to people within Zifa but even outside Zifa including the media’s perspective on the state of football in the country so that at the end of the day we have a well functioning football association,” Menton said.
Mamelodi said Fifa had confidence in Zifa’s capacity to succeed in reorganising their structures.
“We are happy that they have started to strengthen the secretariat by employing more staff, we are positive and we think that this programme will work well in Zimbabwe,” Mamelodi said.
The Botswana-based official also said a similar programme had yielded positive results in Ethiopia.
“Ethiopia are making a lot of progress and working towards fulfilling their targets so we are not imposing things that do not work. If this programme is implemented it will work and Francesco Bruscoli
(Fifa development manager for Africa) will join us on Thursday after which Brendan will leave and we will then go to the Victoria Falls for a meeting of general secretaries from 15 countries.
“The good thing about this review is that Fifa will come in and assist where there are deficiencies and for the next two years they will be sending specialists in all fields to assist the association,” Mamelodi said.
Mamelodi also said their latest visit to Zimbabwe had prompted the Zifa board to reschedule their meeting, which had been pencilled in for the capital last Friday.
“Our visit is one major reason why the Zifa board had to reschedule their meeting because we indicated to them that we wanted to meet with the full board as well and we are now going to do that this Friday.
“We are here simply because we believe Zimbabwe can have a success story to whatever investment Fifa will make into the local game. Obviously Zifa will make the call but we are ready to assist,” Mamelodi said.
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