Online Reporter
Tadious Manyepo
Zimpapers Sports Hub
ZIFA are living to their pledge to anchor the future of Zimbabwe’s football on a strong foundation and have re-modelled their junior development programme.
Today the domestic football mother-body are expected to take a giant step in walking the talk when they launch the mega-rich Roots Impact League, in association with financial institution BancABC in Harare.
While many football fans place their interests in the senior team — the Warriors — ZIFA have been arguing that the path to sustainability can only be reached when there is a strong development programme, which becomes the conveyor belt of talent to the senior team.
It is on the basis of the belief in nurturing talent from a young age for both genders that ZIFA are looking to set up a league in which Under-14 and Under-16 boys and girls will be battling it out from zonal levels.
This will then culminate in each of the country’s 10 provinces having a select side for each category who will then enter the league format competition.
Already, US$500 000 had been set aside for a knock-out contests for juniors via the upcoming ZIFA Presidential Challenge Cup.
But with BancABC also set to renew their romance with domestic football, the good times are poised to roll for ZIFA.
Apart from the Roots Impact League, ZIFA have underscored their mission to make youth development their priority with a number of projects including the construction of a high-end National Academy Centre lined up for this year.
They have also penned a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education to make it easy for them to implement football development concepts across schools.
And the launch of this first-of-its-kind Roots Impact Cup is expected to transform the landscape for the better going into the future.
A ZIFA official yesterday said: “In line with what has been circulating in recent weeks, we are proud to confirm that the much-awaited ZIFA Roots Impact League will be launched this Friday in partnership with BancABC who have come in handy to help out in the cause.”
“As ZIFA, we are very excited with this development. We know football has to be developed from down going up not the other way round.
“When we started our journey as the executive in January last year, we undertook to mould footballers right from the grassroots, coming up with tournaments for them so they could get the required hours of training and the exposure that comes with,’’ the official said.
“We have been deliberating, and now the product is here, ready to be launched and get rolling.
“This is a culmination of that MoU which we signed with the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education last year.
“So, every kid will get an opportunity to play football from the zonal level up to the provincial category.
“The tournament will take the usual format but each province will now have to select their best players who will play in the inter-provincial league. You can see that the pathway is clear.
“From the competition, we can even start picking the best who will then be included in the under-15 or Under-17 national teams.
“The good thing is that we have a lot of support including from corporates like BancABC who have poured in a lot of financial resources to give the Roots Impact League significant meaning.”
Back in the day when football was attractive and league games were always drawing huge crowds, the junior structures were very functional with talented players identified at a tender age and undergoing proper systematic development through the right channels.
Junior teams also thrilled fans in curtain-raiser matches that would begin in the mornings of big match-days.
The upcoming initiative, which will run for the next five months is bigger in impact and better in organisation as it caters for everyone right across the country.
The players identified from the Roots Impact League’s preliminary eliminators are expected to converge at a central learning point so that they can also achieve balance between football and academics.
Added the ZIFA source: “We know that as much as these kids need to play football, get developed and eventually become pros, their academic life matters too.
“Logistical planning to address those issues are being worked out and it is also one of the very purposes the sponsorship money will be catering for.
“We are very excited with this development and all is just set for this new chapter.”
There are also indications that the launch of the ultimate knock-out tournament in the country — the ZIFA Presidential Challenge Cup — will be staged early next week.
dyton mupawaenda