adminfailing to secure enough resources for the trip.
The soccer mother body has come under severe criticism from a nation that was left embarrassed following the chaotic manner in which the Warriors travelled for their penultimate Group G qualifier to Conakry.
Despite travelling with a depleted side in which only 14 players, coach Klaus Dieter Pagels and team physiotherapist Farai Muguwe were the only men who made it to Conakry, the Warriors battled hard but still went down 1-0 to remain rooted at the bottom of their group standings with just one point.
Some of Zifa’s fiercest critics have even called for the association’s board to step down in the wake of the Guinea debacle and the Warriors’ worst World Cup campaign with some of the blame being targeted on chief executive Jonathan Mashingaidze in his capacity as head of the secretariat.
Mashingaidze yesterday acknowledged that “emotions were high and there was anger against Zifa over the manner in which the Warriors’ travelling had been botched and had shamed the national game.”
But the Zifa chief executive appealed “for restraint and for the games stakeholders to critically assess the situation on the ground with a view to finding a lasting solution to the perennial crisis bedevilling the country’s biggest sport.”
Mashingaidze also paid tribute to the Warriors for working hard under very difficult circumstances but maintained that the events at the weekend were a manifestation of the crippling US$4 million debt from which Zifa have been reeling for over two years now.
As the Warriors returned home from their trip of shame yesterday, the Zifa chief executive opened up and said he had noted that a blame game had erupted in the football family and reckoned that it was natural for everyone to be angry in view of what transpired which had left emotions running high.
In the midst of the chaos Pagels’ assistants Lloyd Mutasa and Peter Ndlovu were left stuck in Dakar Senegal after failing to connect to Conakry together with head of delegation Benedict Moyo, team manager Patrick Mutesva and team chef Paradzai Manjonjo.
Mashingaidze said despite the problems they had earlier encountered with the airline in Senegal, they had later been assured that Mutasa, Ndlovu, Moyo and Manjonjo’s seats on the connecting flight had been secured “and the only doubt was on Mutesva who had now been put on standby’’.
The Zifa chief executive also revealed that they had failed to secure any government funding after Treasury told them that they “Naturally as an association when we entered the 2014 World Cup campaign, we wanted to win and qualify and not to just make up the numbers because we know that competing and winning helps us to profile the country and it helps the players to profile themselves too.
“But from the start of the campaign we had problems that resulted in changes to the technical manpower and the players and we knew that it would be difficult against strong opposition like Egypt and Guinea and Mozambique who cannot be taken lightly.
“We wanted to give a good account and there is no way that we planned to fail but for any campaign to take off and be sustained it needs resources but people should remember that we are US$4 million in the red.
“To approach travel agents with our low credit rating, they needed guarantees for payment but despite limited or no funding we had to soldier on,’’ said Mashingaidze
Mashingaidze said the Zimbabwe Football Trust had been set up to help Zifa when the association realised that there would be no financial support from the State.
“We were told and even the Trust was told in no uncertain terms that treasury was too constrained to help us and dreaming that we could squeeze money from there was unthinkable and that is why we sought to set up the Trust and also go on a campaign for a dollar for football.
“The Trust’s obligations are not just for the senior national team but even for development and helping service the Zifa debt and I must say a lot of ground has been covered to date by the Trust.
“As for the Guinea trip we had done bookings well before but the bookings kept falling away because of lack of funding.
Online Reporter