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Ricky Zililo, Senior Sports Reporter
DYNAMOS’ rebuilding project suffered a major blow after diminutive winger Valentine Kadonzvo opted out of the Mbare side in favour of ambitious Bulawayo-based Premier Soccer League club Chicken Inn.

The 25-year-old became the second player from DeMbare to move to Chicken Inn during the off-season after midfielder Brett Amidu.

Chicken Inn coach Joey Antipas, who arrived in Bulawayo on Monday from a three-week attachment at Werder Bremen of Germany, confirmed Kadonzvo’s capture.

“Kadonzvo is with us and has signed. He is a player that can give us width. We cried about our wing play last season and he’ll give us that. We need serious competition, which is good for the team because it will give us the desired results,” Antipas said.

Chicken Inn have been busy bolstering their squad ahead of the 2019 season.

They have already signed 24-year-old central midfielder Sipho Ndlovu from Bulawayo City, central midfielder Amidu (23), striker Marlvin Gaki (24) from Harare City, as well as the attacking pair of Clive Augusto (24) from Ngezi Platinum Stars and Panashe Mutasa (19) from Dynamos.

Chicken Inn ended the 2018 campaign in third place behind champions FC Platinum and runners-up Ngezi Platinum Stars, and have been targeting “young” players.

Antipas reiterated his desire to fight for the championship following their new acquisitions.

“I’ll say what the team really needed was depth in talent. If you look at us last season, we played 18 to 20 players the whole season due to lack of depth. The team is strong as it is, but we had to bring depth so that we get players heavily competing, something we lacked last season.

“If you look at the signings we’ve made, they are all energetic players capable of giving us the firepower we need to run the whole race,” said Antipas.

The two-time championship winning coach with Motor Action in 2010 and Chicken Inn in 2015, hopes his brief stint in Germany will help the Gamecocks fight for the title.

“I got a good insight on the developing trends in terms of technical planning for training as well as planning for development. For us to be involved in the championship equation, we have to improvise and fuse what I saw there and the local style. The training sessions are almost the same, but they do it in a modernised way, on great facilities,” Antipas said.

He will get an opportunity to measure his team’s strength when they participate in a four-team pre-season camp in Malawi next month.

Malawi champions Nyasa Bullets, coached by Callisto Pasuwa, a team from Mozambique and another unnamed Malawi team will form the pre-season tournament to be held at the end of February.

— @ZililoR