IS THIS THE MESSIAH OUR FOOTBALL HAS BEEN WAITING FOR ALL ALONG?

Robson Sharuko Senior Sports Editor
HE describes himself as a passionate and strategic leader, with close to 20 years of experience in the telecoms and financial services at some of the leading blue chip multi-national firms in Africa, and his homecoming show is bringing great expectations to Zimbabwean football.

In his first week as the chief executive of NetOne, Lazarus Muchenje has already shown that the promotion of domestic sport will be a big part of his mission at the helm of the country’s second biggest mobile phone operator by having a meeting with representatives of the football clubs which his company sponsors.

In February this year, NetOne unveiled a landmark one-year renewable $1 million sponsorship package for the country’s Big Three football clubs — Dynamos, Highlanders and CAPS United — with each club getting an equal share of $350 000 which will go mainly into servicing the clubs’ salary bills while some funds also went into signing-on fees.

The company, which also poured $250 000 into the coffers of the Warriors ahead of their 2017 Nations Cup campaign in Gabon, also committed to taking care of other related expenses which the three clubs could encounter along the season.

NetOne also provided the three teams with full kits, sourced from local company Roar but made in China, with the official playing kits for the clubs arriving in the country earlier this week, coinciding with Muchenje’s assumption of duty, and being delivered to the teams.

‘’This is the quality kit that we were saying was on the way and it is here and it is up to the highest possible standards,’’ a spokesman for the company said yesterday.

‘’There is more equipment for the players coming but in terms of the playing kit we have now delivered the kit that we wanted them to use.’’

Until now, the three clubs have been using the training kits, for their league matches, which arrived earlier with the Roar representatives also revealing yesterday that some of the remaining equipment will be delivered soon.

Muchenje charmed the representatives of the three clubs which his company is sponsoring with his vision for the partnership and most of them came out praising him as a possible game-changer who could transform the face of domestic football.

‘’His understanding of football sponsorship, the marriage between sponsors and teams and how we can all make it work for the benefit of both partners was impressive, everyone was blown away by the way he addressed this subject,’’ said one of the club’s representative.

‘’He is a serious man who knows the value that can be driven from this partnership, for the benefit of both parties, and it’s easy to understand why because he is coming from a background where such marriages are valued.

‘’He touched on a number of things and there could actually be improvements in what we are getting and the partnership could run longer than the initial one-year period.’’

Muchenje is coming from an environment where he was one of the top executives at Vodacom, which is part of the Vodafone Group, who are major players in the sponsorship of football and sport on the continent and around the world.

Vodacom have been the flagship sponsors of Soweto giants Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs since 1998 and their sponsorship packages have helped transform the two teams into some of the most profitable and stable football clubs on the continent.

The company, with revenue in excess of $5.4 billion in 2015 and more than 8 000 employees, have pumped millions of dollars into the coffers of Pirates and Chiefs and turned them into model football clubs.

Vodacom also has sponsored football in the DRC and their financial injection helped turn the league in that country into a very competitive one that has produced a club, TP Mazembe, which has won three CAF Champions League titles in the past nine years in which the Lubumbashi giants have also reached the semi-finals of the FIFA Club World Cup.

Their main rivals, AS Vita, have also reached the final of the Champions League during that period.

The company has also bankrolled the league in Tanzania, where a number of Zimbabwean footballers have sought greener pastures, and their parent firm has also invested in football in Zambia through their City of Lusaka project.

Vodacom have also been the main sponsors of Super Rugby which features clubs from South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Argentina. Their parent firm, Vodafone, is a British giant with interest all over the world and have sponsored Manchester United in the past while also investing in Egyptian giants Al Ahly, the most successful football club on the continent. Muchenje is coming from that environment where he has appreciated the power of investment into sport and, in his first indaba with the clubs that NetOne are sponsoring, made a huge impression.

‘’In my career I have held a wide range of positions, ranging from Finance Director (CFO), Sales and Marketing Director, Billing and IT Chief Officer and CEO, thus I have a well-rounded appreciation of ICT and telecom enterprises and extensive Sub-Saharan experience,’’ he says on his Linkedin page.

‘’I am highly innovative and I was at the forefront of some of the major innovations of the GSM era, having project managed the project that created the very first mobile card-based payment system in 1999.

‘’I also led the team that won the very first mobile payments based World Bank project worth US$132 Million in the Democratic Republic of Congo. My career includes work in more than 15 African countries as well as in European countries.

‘’I have presented papers at fora such the GSMA, World Economic Forum-Africa, Columbia Business School (NYC) amongst others.

‘’I have experience of Mergers and Acquisitions in Africa and in Europe. I am a big picture thinker and I am a dynamic team leader and have proved myself in both turnaround and growth ventures. To this extent I led the successful leveraged MBO of Celpay from the FirstRand Group in 2009.

‘’I love challenges and working in fast paced fast growth, high expectation environments and I always strive to produce world class performance in my teams.’’

Dynamos, CAPS United and Highlanders they will be hoping they can tap into his vision and together they can ‘’produce world-class performance in their teams.’’

With Nedbank, who also have a history of sponsoring sport in a big way, also opening their doors in this country, this could be a watershed moment for sport in this country.