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By Perkins-Tino Bare.

Harare, Zimbabwe. (News Of The South) – The Warriors stepped up their preparations for the CHAN tournament to kick off this Saturday in Rwanda as they played a friendly with Confed-Cup bound Harare City.

The team is wrapping up their preparations for the tournament which they went exceeded expectations going all the way to the semi-finals. The Warriors striker Ronald Chitiyo was confident in an interview with a local daily as he said that they were looking forward to better the fortunes of their predecessors.

The team is however bewildered by a host of injuries with the skipper Danny Phiri out with injury. Former Highlanders player Teenage Hadebe who`ll be turning out for Chicken Inn is also set to miss the tournament. The duo of Raphael Kutinyu and Hilary Bakacheza who were part of the Players of the Year are also set to miss the tournament as well.

The absence of this contingent will certainly be a big blow to Calisto Pasuwa. Danny Phiri would have been the one to bring protection at the back for the defenders. Despite that the man also possesses great leadership qualities which would have been vital for a relatively young team. He is also good going with the ball forward and creating chances for the strikers.


Hardlife Zvirekwi is set to be the captain of the team and with the squad to be announced Saturday it’s rather sad that most of the players which made up the cream are ruled out with injury going into the squad selection.

The announcement of the 23-man squad for Rwanda has seen the intensification of the training itself as players seek to impress the coach at last minute.

However the PSL also has to be reproached for a long season in 2015 which I`d say is to blame for most of the injuries trouble we`re now dealing with. First of all they knew very well that CHAN was coming early January and therefore the league had to be wrapped up earlier than the normal late November to give the players enough time to recover from the league activity and also for the coach himself to gel together the team.

But the league ended late with a post season tournament stretching all the way into mid-December with all our big teams taking part. Highlanders, Dynamos, Chicken Inn and FC Platinum who were going to make up the bulk of the team were all involved in footballing activity and now we have a case whereby a long season and a post-season tourney has resulted in our best players picking up knocks in the preps.

On the other hand Pasuwa seems to have sorted his mess with Zifa as he as finally got his contract. The man was aching for a $7 000 contract but he got one for $3 000 which has several clauses mainly centred around performance of the team itself which would mean that he needs to keep qualifying for tournaments to get to his desired figure of $7 000.

Zifa has also come under intense scrutiny for announcing that all proceeds from the CHAN tourney are going to go to the playing staff. This has seen certain parts of the media questioning if the Phillip Chiyangwa-led board has any intent of playing that debt at Zifa which is believed to be well over $3 million.

Funny enough the Warriors themselves suffered by being knocked out of the Fifa World Cup 2018 Qualifiers over outstanding salaries of one Valinhos with the 2022 tourney also under scrutiny in the same manner in the name of Tom Saintfeit.

One thing I understand is that there is no greater motivation we can give our boys than to tell them that they are going to divide the loot from Rwanda solely amongst themselves. Having them work their butts off to clean a mess that was created by Cuthbert Dube won`t be progressive for our game.

If and when Zifa decides to clear the debt then they should set up proper structures which would see our game not only being fruitful but also the organisation itself being self-sustaining. Right now it’s depending on perks from guys in the business domain which is why the councillors were comfortable in their election of Philip Chiyangwa as the Zifa boss.

For now it’s sustained by these perks but then we saw the same model failing under Cuthbert Dube. So props to Zifa for making such a bold move in ensuring that the players get their due rewards.

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