By Tendai Ndemera.
Harare. (News of The South) – AS a keen student of politics, corporate wars, strategic planning or football ecology, I occasionally shed tears for it so much that I sometimes doubt my orgasm. I have watched enough football since boyhood and have been keenly involved in all its facets, so much that I rarely gets emotional about anything football even VAR does not move my thumb.
The American politics is ebbing towards the Watergate scandal of some proportions with the Mueller Report sure to embarrass all students of politics, President Trump, notwithstanding. I am not going to wonder much into that bewildering charade of reality TV. Our football is certainly taking that route under the doubtful leadership of one Felton Kamambo. I am not being alarmist guys.
It has only been 124 days since the mad man of football was deposed at Sango Conference Centre on December 16, ushering in a season many people thought would be a real Easter for our football fortunes. But no resurrection of any sort has happened. Instead we have watched the same script reinventing itself.
No sooner had the new ZIFA with Kamambo at the helm sat for their first meeting on January 15, did we see the suspension on Vice President Gift Banda on spurious allegations spawned by Farai Jere. It had all shades of Phil Chiyangwa all over including the same Chiyangwa characters.
Ironic. Isn’t it?That has created an internecine boardroom wars that have divided the house and exposed Kamambo as lacking leadership.
He has failed to offer any leadership. He has been openly captured by Northern Region particularly Sweeney Mushonga, who he wanted to become CEO of ZIFA and Willard Manyengavana who pride himself as the football kingmaker with his CV including the ouster of Wellington Nyatanga, the election and recall of Cuthbert Dube in October 2015, paving way for the anointed Chiyangwa, who he claims, also engineered his ballot removal in favour of their boy Kamambo last December.
Manyengavana’s quickest spoil was Northern Region return to ZIFA House where he works from for free. Even attempts by all ZIFA executive members bar Kamambo, to remove them have failed. Referees desk, women desk, junior football desk have no office to operate from because Northern Region, who claim the building is theirs and was built by them, still occupies to enable them to be closer to the seat of power where they control Kamambo as a baby birthday toy.
So the captive Kamambo can not do anything to our game when the likes of Innocent Benza breaks rules of engagement by wearing a jersey numbered IB9. The rulebook is clear. One can only wear a jersey numbered 1 to 99. The Bryton Malandule match commissioners brigade have ignored that foul or maybe the $270 fees they receive has blinded them from the rulebook tenets.
Yet ZIFA has left that to the embarrassment of the nation……sadly our Premiership is now beamed LIVE on ZBCTV and viewed across the continent. One good friend of mine wrote from Botswana: “I know that CR7 is a global brand, but please remind your league management that Ronaldo always wear his number 7 shirt and never CR7. Why are you ignoring that my man? I know your passion for football is almost a profession….”
My response to him read, “Eish, that was below the belt. Was that all you could see from the match boss? Anyway, point taken. I will raise it with the authorities but I agree with you that it is not only the player to blame.
“The whole services chain..the referees who are supposed to check the equipment, league management, sponsors, match commissioners(sadly ours have become match assessors yet take the fees for commissioners) and FA are to blame too. But thanks for raising the point, all the same”.
While on the same, have the technical and referees committee together with the competitions committee observed how some clubs, notably TelOne have circumvented the club licensing protocol on coaches having to have CAF A licences to be eligible to sit on the technical bench.
Our very likable Joel Luphahla, now designated as technical team manager sits on the bench and barks instruction during the match….literally doing the same duties qualified and licensed coaches do. If that is left unchecked then ZIFA can as well forget about that CAF A nonsense.
If Luphahla does not hold the required license, whether they elect to make him a kit manager or ballboy or medic, he should not do the duties expected of those qualified for the task. If TelOne could appoint someone to be head coach, why not let the guy do the job without being checkmated by Luphahla.
And the ugly beast of ballboys menace has returned to the fore again, with these boys who are supposed to be junior players at their clubs, disappearing from vicinity the moment their team leads…..more so when it is a late goal. Baobab stadium witnessed that in the big clash between Ngezi Platinum and Chicken Inn.
It was too deliberate and unsportsmanlike, so much that we expect the PSL to act. We will wait to see if the ZIFA referees brigade notes that in their reports to make it easy for PSL to act.
Meanwhile the Umbro vendors who came down to meet ZIFA leadership of Kamambo and Phelimon Machana on Wednesday over the kit deal failed to move any mountains. ZIFA are still stuck in the ditch they forced themselves into in February after they signed the deal without reading the fine lines. No due diligence was done and crucially instead of using the lawyers to look at the contract, it was Mushonga, who we all know his qualifications and area of expertise is not legal, who certified it. And it was rushed too. Why?
At least they managed to change a few things in the document, meaning we are still stuck with Umbro, although improvements are expected especially in the right colors not that joke they rushed into Harare on the eve of the Congo match last month.
Maybe the $100K carrot that was dangled is the stumbling block….and some ZIFA executive members are keen on knowing who received what and who else benefited from the pickings. The beauty about the dirty is that it always comes out….and we will all know. So much about checks and balances.
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