adminCALLS from local football stakeholders for the Zifa administration to resign en-masse are getting louder with each passing day as Government increasingly comes under pressure to take a cue from Nigeria and dissolve the ZIFA board. This week, The Manica Post was inundated with calls from soccer fans in Manicaland questioning the silence and inactivity on the part of the Sports Ministry.
Discontentment reached an all-time high after the country’s recent humiliating Africa Cup of Nations preliminary stage first round exit at the hands of Tanzania.
That the football association’s president, Cuthbert Dube went to Brazil to watch the final of the 2014 Fifa World Cup, while the national game is reeling under a plethora of challenges chef among them maladministration, has left soccer fans questioning the wisdom behind
Government’s reluctance to dissolve the Zifa board. That Dube has not watched Warriors’ matches even at home, but chooses to be at the World Cup offshore in Brazil has left many questioning his commitment to the national game.
“It is sad that we hoped the creation of an independent Sports Ministry would help resolve issues of maladministration in our football but it appears we were wrong.
“Being banned for a period from international competitions is better than being a consistent embarrassment in the same international tournaments,” said Desire Dube of Chipinge.
Isaac Chapatarongo of Nyanga said the nation must take a leaf from Nigeria and make bold decisions if we are to realise our dreams as a serious football playing nation.
“If Nigeria, a powerhouse on the continent who were at the World Cup, have the temerity to suspend the country’s top soccer official following the team’s round-of-16 exit from the World Cup after losing to France, surely are we not idiots if we continue hanging on to a hopeless board that sat and watched as we bowed out in the first round of the preliminary stage of the Orange Africa Cup of Nations against Tanzania?
“I do not think we are that bad as a nation, but we have been taken ten steps backwards by an administration that has nothing tangible to offer to improve our football,” he said.
Fifa last week suspended Nigeria from international football due to government interference after the country’s High Court ruling granted an injunction to suspend the country’s top soccer official, Aminu Maigari.
Maigari was shown the exit along with his executive committee and the Nigerian Football Federation congress following the team’s round-of-16 exit from the World Cup after losing to France.
Dube and his entourage, which included Zifa chief executive Jonathan Mashingaidze, Premier Soccer League chairman Twine Phiri, legislator Temba Mliswa — who chairs the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Education, Sport, Arts and Culture — and Sports Minister Andrew Langa, were part of the crowd that watched the final of the 2014 Fifa World Cup match between Germany and Argentina at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro.
This is despite the fact that Zimbabwe was booted out of the preliminary stages of qualification for the 2018 Fifa Soccer World Cup by lowly Taifa Stars of Tanzania.
Dube and Mashingaidze’s trips were sponsored by FIFA, while sponsorship had to be sought for the rest of his travelling troupe.
Online Reporter