Zimpapers Logo

Ricky Zililo, Senior Sports Reporter

THE domestic football season may conform to Caf’s decision to align their calendar with other modern African leagues in line with other Fifa competitions after the coronavirus pandemic forced the delay in the 2020 programme kick-off.

The Premier Soccer League and all lower division programmes under the auspices of Zifa have been indefinitely postponed after President Mnangagwa declared the coronavirus pandemic a state of national disaster and announced a raft of measures to curb its spread in Zimbabwe.

President Mnangagwa announced the Government’s ban on gatherings of more than 100 people for 60 days.

This means the domestic season, initially scheduled to start on March 28, may end up kicking off around June if the pandemic is contained.

Zimbabwe’s domestic season runs between March and November while the Fifa and Caf calendars start from August to May.

Zifa councillors, cognisant of the fact that an experiment with the August to May calendar in the 1990s by their predecessors led by the late Morrison Sifelani and Chris Sibanda hit a snag largely due to poor facilities, rejected a move to align the local league with the Caf calendar at last year’s general meeting.

Allan Mpofu

They argued that most venues used for topflight and lower leagues had problems with the drainage systems and therefore could not be used during the rainy season.

It now seems inevitable for the local league to align their season with Caf as the continental body re-aligned the calendar of its major tournaments such as the Afcon and the inter-club competitions last year. The 2020 Champions League and the Confederation Cup kicked off last December.

PSL chief executive officer Kennedy Ndebele said the league’s programme will be structured “around how Fifa and Caf” respond when worldwide games start.

“Remember this is a new pandemic and no one knows what will happen, but an opportunity may be there to re-align the calendar, but there are lots of variables. From PSL’s perspective, that (alignment of the calendar) is subject to all other stakeholders (Zifa councillors) agreeing, because there are also lower divisions to consider,” said Ndebele.

The PSL will draw lessons from the pandemic and probably come up with plans to address, among other things, insurance for player salaries.

Acting Zifa Bulawayo Metropolitan Province chairman supported the re-alignment.

“Maybe this is God’s way of us moving with the rest of the world because the talk of aligning our season with the rest of the world has gone on for a while,” Mpofu said.

Zifa Southern Region board member Fiso Siziba said while the opportunity to align the season arises, local authorities have to move with speed to attend to facilities that lower leagues use.

“Stadiums for lower leagues should also be done in a way that they can be used during the rainy season,” said Siziba. – @ZililoR.