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Marshall Gore
Sports Correspondent
FOLLOWING the suspension of domestic football last year, the game back home has been suffering in silence, with many players now contemplating retirement.
Others are also looking at alternative means for survival.
It’s not a secret the welfare of our players, and officials, has been adversely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Many clubs have failed to honour their contracts, without games being played, and the much-needed matchday revenue being realised.
When our national team performed poorly, at the CHAN finals, critics pointed at lack of players’ fitness, due to the prolonged break, as the main cause of the dismal show.
It is now critical the Premier Soccer League, ZIFA and all football stakeholders work closely with the Government, and Sports Commission, in finding urgent solutions for football to resume, in Zimbabwe.
If the game doesn’t resume immediately, the country will be at serious risk of losing a whole generation of local players, due to inactivity.
Not having an active league also presents us with the challenge of failing to qualify for both the World Cup and AFCON finals in Cameroon and Qatar in 2022.
Reports show that most of our Europe-based players will not be available for the Botswana and Zambia games.
Consultation with all elite football clubs, in the country, is now key, as much as key engagement with public agencies, and other relevant stakeholders, in establishing #ProjectRestart. There has to be an immediate safety plan, of resuming the campaign, without any further delays.
Our football has suffered painfully in silence.
It’s now time to confront all the suspicions, fears and scepticism and come up with a tangible solution.
What is clear, at this juncture, is that life will never be the same, during and after, the Covid-19 pandemic.
The World Health Organisation has made it clear we have to learn to live with the coronavirus for some time.
The new normal is about being pragmatic, innovative and knowing how-to live-in changing times, while also learning to embrace science, and utilising modern technology for survival.
It’s now time to introspect, and think inside the box, collectively.
We are already in the box, trapped by the situation.
We now need to break out, using solid ideas, and resilience models.
Closer collaboration between health authorities, sports associations and regulators is now essential, in finding a plan, to get our league going.
We now need to make sacrifices to save our football.
Now, more than ever, we need to dig deeper, and tap into our resilience models, to get our football back.
In the year 2021, people have to learn to cope with, and work through challenging life experiences.
In a nutshell, resilience theory refers to the ideas surrounding how people are affected by, and adapt to things, like adversity, change, loss and risk.
Being resilient does not mean that people don’t experience stress, emotional upheaval and suffering.
In the case of our players, I think they are much safer training and playing, in a bubble, than staying at home and mixing and mingling with peers in the ghetto.
We all know that the people, at high risk of being killed by Covid-19 infections, are those with serious existing underlining health problems, our overweight colleagues (mostly men) and the elderly.
The fact that most of our football players are not in this high-risk category makes it easy for us to plan Project Restart in Zimbabwe. When we look at the Covid-19 infection rates in the English Premier League, since its resumption, 0.09% is the percentage of positive results (20) from 22 133 Covid-19 tests of players and coaching staff.
As the biggest pool of collected data in England, the Premier League has shared this information with Public Health England, as a key part of their coronavirus research.
Most of the players, who tested positive, recovered back to full fitness, within 10 days of isolation. No player deaths were recorded, relating to Covid-19, this year and last year.
In the UK, all EPL players are tested twice weekly and only allowed to mix with their teammates, and immediate family.
Surely, we can implement this in Zimbabwe.
The global availability of affordable instant Covid-19 test kits, and the vaccination programme, makes this year better than last year.
Below is a plan and some of the methods English Premier League clubs worked together to resume and conclude the 2019/20 season safely.
l Following the suspension of the 2019/20 season on March 13, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the English Premier League worked closely with the Government, the whole of professional football in England, public agencies and other relevant stakeholders on Project Restart, to resume the campaign when it was safe to do so.
l Throughout the crisis, the overriding priority was the health and well-being of everyone, and the safety of players, coaches and club staff was paramount in both the phased return to training, and the resumption of matches.
l All home and away teams, and officials, had their body temperatures taken on arrival at football stadiums and training grounds
l Players and managers were consulted throughout and strict protocols were put in place to ensure that both training grounds and stadiums were as safe as possible for everybody present.
l Football clubs medical and operations team were heavily guided by the Premier League in managing test and infection control at stadiums.
l The end product was a process that was as safe as it possibly could be and quite simplistic in the way the players could follow it.
There are a lot of lessons for the Zimbabwe Premier Soccer League to learn from the English Premier League experience.
Despite our limited resources, we can still get our football back.
It’s not too expensive to implement a Covid-19 protocol.
We just need to replicate what we did for the Algeria home game in November 2020, at the National Sports Stadium, in all our local games.
l Marshall Gore is a UK-based football administrator and CEO of Team Zimbabwe UK
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