admininterested in reaping the financial rewards of selling players to South Africa, instead of maintaining the club’s proud heritage as one of the Big Three football teams in the country.
Harare businessmen Twine Phiri and Farai Jere, who own CAPS United, have come under intense criticism from a number of quarters who accuse them of converting the Green Machine into a flea market for player sales to Super Diski clubs.
With CAPS United struggling in sixth place, with just six wins from 19 matches in the Castle Lager Premiership, the volume of the criticism has increased a notch while the army of the critics has also grown in numbers with most of them laying the blame on the sale of players.
Others have accused the two directors of concentrating more on selling players, and the revenue that it generates, than on developing a competitive team capable of ending the club’s lengthy wait for the league championship.
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Yesterday Phiri and Jere told The Herald that while they would have loved to keep their star players at CAPS United, the reality was that they were helpless to stop them from moving to South African clubs.
The two directors also claimed that the rising costs of running CAPS United, coupled with a steep rise in the cost of players coming into the team from the local market, have gobbled virtually all the revenue generated from the player transfers.
In the past year, CAPS United have sold Method Mwanjali, Nyasha Mushekwi, Lionel Mtizwa, Tafadzwa Rusike, Oscar Machapa, Simba Sithole and Gilbert Mapemba to South African clubs.
CAPS United owned a 20 percent stake in Sithole with 80 percent of the player belonging to a group led by Harare businessman Ziyambi Ziyambi, who managed the striker, and took him under his care in the past year.
Phiri, who is also the PSL chairman, said CAPS United was both a business and a football club and it was important for the directors to balance the books to keep the team alive in a challenging economic environment.
“We are running a business and every day it needs funds to just to keep it going and where the club gets such funds to foot all those daily bills is the responsibility of the directors,” said Phiri.
“It’s not been an easy task and the dollarisation of the economy has brought its challenges in that area and that we don’t have personal sponsors to help us along has not helped matters either.
“We have had to juggle around, just to keep the club going, and the sale of players, unfortunately, remains one of the few available options that we have to get some income to foot the costs of running the team.
“Given a choice, with enough money in the bank, we would have wanted to keep our star players but it’s impossible because we can’t compete with the South African clubs and, once a player knows
that he is wanted, you can tell that even his commitment to your club becomes questionable.
“Until we reach a stage where we have sponsors and we can pay our players about R100 000 a month, we are powerless to stop them going to South Africa because to them it’s a grand opportunity to change their lives.”
CAPS United vice-president Jere, who runs the club on a daily basis these days with Phiri committed with his Premiership assignments, said there was a misconception that the Green Machine had reaped a fortune in the past year from player sales.
“The criticism we are getting is that we are selling too many players and making a lot of money, without investing it back into the team, and that has weakened our club,” said Jere.
“If we had a choice we would not have sold our players at the prices that we sold them because we felt we deserved more but we were under pressure because the boys felt they had this grand opportunity to have a better life and we were pushed into a tight corner.
“For instance, we were paying Method Mwanjali US$300 a month and suddenly he was being offered R100 000 a month as a salary by Mamelodi Sundowns and you can’t prevent such a move, even when you feel the buying club is offering less than what you believe is the value for the player, because the player feels this is a grand opportunity for him.
“We sold Mapemba to Moroka Swallows for R300 000 and when you work that out it comes to around US$42 000 and we bought Charles Chiutsa from Monomotapa for US$40 000, so in terms of difference, there was just US$2 000.
“But it seems only few people are interested in the story when we are buying and how much it costs us to do that and most of them are interested in the story when we are selling.
“Stephen Alimenda cost us US$40 000 from Highlanders and that is about roughly the same price that we sold Fire (Tafadzwa Rusike) to Ajax Cape Town last year but there is more interest, we believe, in what we got from Ajax than what Stephen cost us.
“The salary bill, alone, at CAPS United is around US$25 000 a month and what we get from our two home matches, every month, is about US$6 000 or so, and then you have the rentals for every player, the allowances and the winning bonuses when we are doing well.
“So in the last seven months, you will see that we have spent more than US$300 000 in running the club alone, and when you add the costs of running the club in the other six months leading to the end of last year, you will realise that we have already spent more than what we got in selling all our players in the past year.
“Yes, we have received some income but it has only been good enough to help us balance the books and keep the club going not a profit for any of its directors or the staff who work at the team.”
Jere said he would have preferred, in an ideal world, to still have Mushekwi leading his attacking line.
“A player like Nyasha comes once in a while and I would have wanted to keep him in the team because he was a very good servant for CAPS United and we could rely on him to score all the time,” said Jere.
“But, we live in a tough world and we gave Nyasha the chance to show his skills and the rich boys were watching and when they came with an offer for the player, we could not stop them even when we felt we could hold out for a bigger transfer fee.
“You look at what you are paying the player and what they are promising him and you can tell that it’s a great opportunity for the young man and, as a club, we lose our power to bargain because the boy wants to go very quickly.
“When Method and Lionel came back home during the off-season, they were both driving a new Nissan Navara, yet we could not even afford to buy them a second hand Nissan Sunny here, and you can tell that things have changed for them.
“We cannot stand in the way of our players, not today and not tomorrow, because we cannot match the South African clubs when they come knocking on the door.
“It’s like saying Aces Youth Academy should have held on to Knowledge Musona until the German club came simply because they didn’t get the same substantial amount that Kaizer Chiefs got. It doesn’t work that way.”
Jere also questioned the myth that CAPS United had become a poorer team since selling their players.
“In 2007 we had some of these players and we still found ourselves in a relegation fight and that has been the case in all the years that followed where we never really made a big charge for the title,” said Jere.
“We need to win the league because that is what matters.”
CAPS United finished seventh in 2007 with 39 points but were just five points better than Black Rhinos who were relegated that year and, in 2008, the Green Machine finished 12th, with 36 points, the same tally as relegated Masvingo United as Makepekepe were only saved by a superior goal difference.
Only in 2006, when CAPS United finished fourth, and in 2009, when they finished third, did the Green Machine make a big impression.
Online Reporter