Where does Zim football stand?

From Robson Sharuko in FRANKFURT, Germany
FOR the group of Zimbabwean sports journalists, used to writing or broadcasting the depressing tales of the challenges that stalk their poor clubs, a day spent at the Deutsche FuBball Liga headquarters yesterday, was a defining one.
For a refreshing change, the people who were addressing them were not talking about a club like Motor Action limping from one crisis to another, as it struggles under the suffocating yoke of depressed funding, and now starring relegation just three years after being crowned champions.

This wasn’t about empty stadiums that have become a feature of the domestic game that they cover, back home, whenever the identity of the teams that are on show doesn’t include Dynamos, Highlanders or CAPS United.

This was about the Bundesliga, full stadiums bursting with life at every game, thriving football clubs that generate millions of dollars, millionaire footballers who have become the stars of the world and the mean marketing machine that is driving this product.
Well, for the Zimbabwean journalists, this was foreign territory.

But it got a lot of them thinking, discussing and taking a deeper look at their game back home, where they make their living, the depressing state that it finds itself in and how things could be changed for a better tomorrow.

So what were their impressions?
“From the moment that one touches down at Frankfurt International Airport, one can’t help but notice that organisation and structure are at the heart of everything “German”, broadcaster, Mike Madoda said.

“It is therefore of no surprise that those characteristics are also the hallmark of the DFL. Today we celebrate the success that is the Bundesliga and muse over its achievements but it’s not more than a decade ago that the challenges facing Germany football both on and off the field were equally as daunting as our own.

“The German national team had become the laughing stock of Europe, Borussia Dortmund was bankrupt and on the verge of collapse. Yet, in a little over a decade, they have turned the situation around.

“Key to this turnaround has been the implementation of solid structures and the organisation of their football from grassroots right through to the professional level — it is an investment that we too can make and implement with ruthless efficiency if our football is to rise from mediocrity.

“If they could do it, so we can, there is yet hope.”
Another broadcaster, Howard Musonza, of Star FM radio, said he had been left devastated by the plight that Zimbabwean football finds itself in today.

“Today’s presentations have really made a mockery of our football and the administrators who are not doing anything to improve it,” said Musonza.

“Yes, everything is hinged on funding but football in Zimbabwe is in a desperate shape. First, we need real structures that can point us to where we want to go and what we really want to achieve.

“A little organisation should be the first stop with the right people in the right positions and everyone committed to their duties, in terms of having the right personnel, we seem to be still in the Stone Ages.

“The Germans really treat football as a culture and they have really accepted it as a part of their lives.”
Former Zimbabwe international, Alois Bunjira, who is also a broadcaster with Zi-FM Stereo, said local football still had a long way to catch up with what was happening elsewhere.

“Judging by what I have heard in this workshop so far, I think we have a long way to go,” said Bunjira.
“What caught my attention more is how German football made a turn around for the better using youth academies, they had a vision.
“It clearly shows that there cannot be soccer development if we don’t start from developing our players and in Zimbabwe most clubs don’t even have junior teams.

“The marketing allowed the German model.
“Instead of just having one overall sponsor for the league, we could have a company like DFL pushing for sponsorship packages for all the clubs.”

H-Metro reporter, Chipo Sabeta, said Zimbabwean football needs an overhaul.
“Zimbabwe is way behind and generally our football need total revamp for it to come close to matching international standards.”