Warriors’ Comoros trip in doubt

Grace Chingoma Senior Sports Reporter
THE Warriors trip to Comoros for the Chan return leg hangs in the balance following revelations by Sports Commission yesterday that they haven’t secured the financial resources to help Zifa charter a plane to the Indian Ocean island.

The team is scheduled to leave this evening for the match set for tomorrow afternoon.

Yesterday, Sports Commission director-general, Charles Nhemachena, told the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Education, Sport, Arts and Culture that while they have been trying to assist Zifa, through the Ministry, they didn’t have the funds, right now, to confirm they would charter a plane.

“Right now we don’t have anything tangible in terms of resources on our hands for the trip to the Comoros,” said Nhemachena.

“Zifa came to the Sport and Recreation Commission indicating that they don’t have resources to travel for the Comoros match.

“They indicated that what they’ve managed to put in place is the accommodation for the team when they get to Comoros. They managed to do that on a reciprocal basis because they looked after the Comoros team when they came here. So the Comoros are going to accommodate them there.

“When it comes to the other issues, firstly the air travel, they would have required about $52,000 or thereabouts to go on a scheduled flight but the challenge with the scheduled flight is that it may take much longer to get there and at the same time there is a possibility of the team travelling in batches because there is only one aircraft travelling to Comoros, from Kenya, I think.

“So they came up with the option of a charter and we then presented this to our Ministry. The Minister indicated that he would want to facilitate that and the Ministry officials are working with the Ministry of Finance to try and get that done.

“In the meantime we have also advertised through radio and television and the newspapers to say if there are those fans who would want to go to the Comoros there are seats that are available.

“We actually indicated that there are 70 seats available and we were hoping that if these seats are taken up it would also mean that we have some resources that we will channel towards the upkeep of the players.

“The unfortunate thing is that we got the request rather late and, obviously, for people to mobilise resources in a short space of time might be a serious challenge.”

Even the technical team was in the dark about their travel arrangements with manager Shariff Mussa saying they have just been told that they would leave this evening.

Pasuwa said it was a challenge to prepare without knowing finer details of their travel plans.

“The team is getting there but the challenge is we don’t know when the team will leave and we don’t know how much time we will have to rest, loosen up at the match venue there and how much time we have to prepare before we go into action,” said Pasuwa.

“We just heard that we should leave Friday evening so we don’t know how we will manage our time.”

Yesterday, the coach took his team through their paces at Rufaro hoping to travel with all the 20 players in camp for the Comoros.

He was relieved that some of the players who picked some knocks such as Edmore Chirambadare and Emmanuel Mandiranga were now in good shape.

Caps United goalkeeper, Chris Mverechena, who had a late call-up, also trained with Donovan Bernard and DC Academy’s Nelson Simbanegavi, for the first time yesterday.

Rookie striker Tinotenda Kadewere, who is likely to be thrust into action from the start following the unavailability of regular forwards, said he was ready for the assignment.

“In the first game I played about five minutes so I’m looking forward to the game. In the first match I was looking for a goal, I really wanted to score.

“I know I can score in Comoros if I get game time.

“We will win the match and I don’t see why we will fail. We should just be united as a team. We should not underrate them. They are a good side and would be tough at home. When they played here they got some chances here and there,” said Kadewere.

Meanwhile, Zifa president, Cuthbert Dube, was set to leave for Canada to attend the Fifa Women World Cup final between the United States and Japan.

It was not immediately clear as to who will be the acting Zifa president in his absence.