adminPLAYERS plying their trade in the women’s “rebel’’ league run by suspended chairperson Miriam Sibanda have been dealt a huge blow as they would not be considered for national team selection.
Zimbabwe Women Football interim chairperson Elizabeth Langa said they had no option but to instruct national team selectors from picking players from clubs that continue to defy her board.
Langa said they wrote to football clubs in the “other” league urging them to ditch the Sibanda-run league for their own two-pool league but they (clubs) snubbed their request.
Langa said they had made the painful decision after realising there was no other way to force the clubs to comply, adding that they were aware it was the players who were going to suffer most.
We had to wield the stick in an effort to bring normalcy in the women’s game, she said.
“That other league is disruptive and pretentious. They can’t keep on calling themselves the Super League because they are not. What they are doing is simply chasing away sponsors because companies will look at this and say they do not want to be involved in this chaos and at the end of the day we lose funding,” said Langa.
There are two Super Leagues running concurrently one being administered by Langa and the other by Sibanda.
The split took place after the ZWF assembly met and resolved to suspend Sibanda pending a disciplinary hearing and appointed Langa as the interim chairperson.
“This was a difficult decision (restrict national team selection) to arrive at and we only made it as a last resort after we wrote to the clubs and appealed to them to come and work with us as we are the board recognised by Zifa but they rebuffed our efforts saying they will only come to us when Sibanda’s case has been concluded.
“We sat down as a board and realised the only other option we have is to instruct the women national teams’ technical departments not to select players from teams in that league,” said Langa.
In an earlier interview Sibanda said she was happy the girls were playing football and that was her only concern. She refused to comment further.
Clubs that stuck with Sibanda include Black Rhinos Queens, Chapungu Queens, ZRP Morris Depot, Weerams, Auckland Queens, Cowdray Park Queens, Hwange Ladies, Mwenezana Queens, ZRP Harare, Tenax Queens and Borrow Jets Queens while teams that are in the two-pool league administered by Langa are Chipembere, Mwenezana, Inline, Masvingo, New Orleans, Mufakose, Cyclone, Flame Lilly, Conduit, Tenax, Faith Drive and Mufakose.
Cowdray Park Queens director, Nkosilathi Hove, however, claimed he had not received the purported letter asking them to come to Langa’s Super League.
“We did not receive the letter but as a team owner, I am not happy with these politics affecting the players negatively. While administrators fight it is girls that suffer,’’ said Hove.
“Some of these officials do not even own teams and have never contributed a cent towards the development of the game but they are busy fighting each other to the detriment of the players,” he said.
Former Zimbabwe Women’s Soccer League chairperson and former Zifa Board member Susan Chibizhe recently described the chaos that has gripped women’s football as “madness” that would seriously affect the girls more than the administrators.
Chibizhe said it was ridiculous that there were two national leagues running concurrently, and the situation would affect the players’ development “big time’’ and that the leaders were sacrificing the players instead of developing them.
Chibizhe said the administrators should swallow their pride, act like mature people, put the interests of the players first, stop politicking and develop the sport.
“They should simply approach each other and fix this mess because football has to be the winner at the end of the day. Female players should not be short-changed because of these fights,” she said.
Bongani Ndlovu