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Limukani Ncube Off the ball
IT was hard to imagine the nation agreeing with something that has come from the Zifa headquarters until this week when the board announced that Ian Gorowa had been retained as senior national team coach.Prior to that, there were whispers that some influential people at Zifa and some board members were eager to change the technical team, and it took some serious engagements among board members, president and vice president to have Gorowa retained as coach, giving him the greenlight to choose his assistants as the nation seeks to prepare for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers.
Even former national team coach, Sunday Chidzambwa, came out of his closet and saluted Zifa for a job well done. You can tell that Gorowa was the people’s choice and anyone given that role would have been literally walking on eggs, as any result otherwise would have been deemed catastrophic by the soccer loving public.
You wonder how some people wanted to discard the achievements by Gorowa and his technical team in the Chan tournament, and the feeling out there, in all corners of the country, is that he deserves another chance to continue with his promising project. Granted, like any human being, Gorowa has his shortcomings, which Zifa will have to nurse, but his success on the field of play is what people care about, not necessarily who he shares a soup of manqina/mazondo during his spare time.
You have to give a pat on the back to Zifa for avoiding a mistake made by the previous board in failing to hire a proper national team coach from the onset, and coming up with funny arrangements of co-coaches in order to soothe each other’s egos, when it was supposed to be either Madinda Ndlovu or Norman Mapeza as national team coach.
The nation was waiting for Zifa to say who will be in charge when Warriors engagements start in a few weeks time, after public spats between the coach and Zifa CEO Jonathan Mashingaidze, but as Zifa vice president Omega Sibanda has said in the past, this is not the time to be going back to raise dust, it is time for everyone to remember that we are all Zimbabweans and we all love football and we have to pull in one direction.
Of course, Gorowa is owed money by the association, but he took it like a man and true patriot and accepted to continue working, a job that will certainly grow his profile internationally, worth much more perhaps than the money he is owed, and he has also been magnanimous enough to acknowledge the role played by Zifa president Cuthbert Dube in giving him some allowances to “keep going” as football players call them.
It will be foolhardy for the current board to start wasting time on sins said to have been committed by some fellows while they were not in office, as that would further soil the image of the association. The board has to work extra hard to move away from the war zone to a friendly zone, so as to attract more friends and partners who will pour in money and help national teams fulfil their matches home and away.
Those who are still in the election mode, or pre-election mode, certainly have no place in the new Zifa because they will not serve the interests of the generality of the football loving public, except a few individuals who pay for their drinks and hotel bills.
Soon after Dube won the presidency, all-rounder sports reporter Muziwethu Hadebe wrote an interesting piece in our sister paper, B-Metro, presented in a press release format as if he was the Zifa president.
Hadebe made a number of key points that if he were in Dube’s shoes, he would pursue and with the passage of time, you realise he had some valid points and the main one being that Zifa needs a corporate face. This is so because the CEO and his staffers have been involved in a tug of war with some key stakeholders, at times doing their job in a rightful manner, at times having strayed, but the end result is that some key stakeholders view them from a different light.
It will obviously be foolish to expect Zifa president Dube to discard his CEO just like that, a man who has served him with so much loyalty over the years, but when a business decision has to be taken, a post can be created that will be the corporate face of the association, while Mashingaidze and others run with other projects. I have no doubt Mashingaidze is a good football administrator, very schooled in his area and very eloquent, but the question I keep getting from those I interact with is can he be the corporate face of the association?
Below is part of the “press statement” by Hadebe in Dube’s shoes: “Now that the elections are over, it is time to work. My first term was mainly the laying of foundation which I think is now stable. My immediate task is to bring partners into our game that will support us financially as we all know that we are sitting on a debt of over $5 million. We are also all aware that I have had to fund the running of Zifa and the national team, this was important for our game to move forward. I must however, admit that it is not feasible for an individual to continue sponsoring the national team.
“In that light Zifa will be appointing a new Chief executive officer who will be expected to turn around the fortunes of Zifa and make it a true business entity. Our task is to look for a top business executive and not necessarily a football administrator. I think it’s high time as football people that we separate the two for the good of our beautiful game. So let’s not be surprised to see a top executive running our football.
“To those who were challenging me for this post, I call upon them to join me and my new executive in charting the way forward for our game. Some of them have been in Zifa before and some have run some successful football projects, Zifa still needs their brains and together I believe we can take our football to another level.”
The qualifiers start next week, with Zimbabwe away to Tanzania and we wish the entire Zifa leadership, coaches and players good luck. For comments and contributions email [email protected]. You can also follow this writer on Twitter and Facebook.
Online Reporter