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Cuthbert Dube

Harare Bureau
THE Zifa board has dissolved all the national football teams with immediate effect and their decision was reached following an emergency meeting held on Wednesday at the Zifa Village.
This is the second time that a Cuthbert Dube-led board has disbanded the Warriors after they took the same route when the senior national team crashed out of the 2013 African Nations Cup qualifiers.

Dube, who had previously shunned coming before Parliamentarians, made the announcement when he gave oral evidence before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Education, Sport, Arts and Culture yesterday.

“What I can reveal is that we have dissolved the national teams and this was done following our emergency board meeting yesterday (Wednesday).
“We now need to start afresh and should be appointing personnel to lead the teams,” said Dube.

He said Zifa was also focused on rolling out their strategic plan within the next month and that their thrust is now on developing the junior teams so that they will be ripe to challenge for major assignments like the African Cup of Nations and the World Cup campaigns.

“For the immediate assignments, the Under-23 team players form the nucleus of the senior team but we have also restructured all teams from the Under-13s, Under-15s, Under-17s and Under-20s. We believe the future of Zimbabwe football lies in the juniors,” said Dube.

In November 2012, Dube told journalists that his board had dissolved the Warriors set-up as the nation was still reeling from a crushing defeat against Angola.
Zimbabwe crashed out in the last round of the 2013 Afcon qualifiers after beating Angola 3-1 in the first leg in Harare and then losing 2-0 in Luanda.

Zifa’s latest decision to dissolve the national teams, which is not largely surprising, comes less than two days after Ian Gorowa resigned from his job as Warriors head coach.

The Olympic team, which is the second tier national team, have been inactive for a very long time.
Warriors legend Peter Ndlovu who had been appointed the head coach left without having completed any assignment while the Under-20 and the Under-17 teams are in the doldrums.

In August 2012, the Under-20 team failed to secure air tickets to Luanda while in November of the same year, the Under-17 met the same fate for their trip to Congo.
As the Zifa board made their presentations, chairman of the committee Temba Mliswa pointed out that sport in Zimbabwe and football in particular was failing to produce desired results because there was no national framework.

Mliswa challenged Zifa to produce a national plan for the game which focuses on developing the juniors and sound administration.
A former fitness trainer, Mliswa also insinuated that Gorowa was more of a player/agent than a football coach but Dube vainly defended the claim by saying, limited funding affected the Warriors’ performance.

“When we appointed Ian Gorowa, we did not know anything (on assertions that he was a player agent). It was only after the game against Tanzania which was a disaster that six players were immediately sought in South Africa but as Zifa we have not yet received any transfer fees and we are still going through that process.

“I regard Gorowa as a son and I told him to regard his future because there is still more ahead of him. I was disappointed with one player during Chan. Gorowa did a fantastic job but the player was continuously selected and he was not doing well,” he said.

During his reign as Zifa boss, the Warriors have changed coaches with Norman Mapeza, Madinda Ndlovu, Tom Saintfiet, Rahman Gumbo, Klaus Dieter-Pagels and of late Gorowa failing to take Zimbabwe to either the World Cup or Nations Cup finals.

“There are a number of factors that have led us to have a high turnover of coaches over the years. One of the reasons has to do with funding while the other is they did not perform well.

“We were also concerned more with our local boys in getting the jobs and some of them have done fairly well like this boy who just resigned Ian Gorowa, who also made history by beating Zambia for the first time in Ndola. Zambia had never been beaten in Ndola for 45 years but other than that the performance of our children (coaches) had not been very satisfactory.

“On Norman Mapeza, Rahman Gumbo and of late Ian Gorowa, I will not mention this circus one Tom Saintfiet but of these, I pumped money out of my pocket. That was the period of the Government of National Unity and there was little money coming from government.

“I would like to thank the government for what they did for Chan and for the first time, we got something in the region of $70,000 and that was a positive move.
“So it’s part of our strategic plan to have youth policies and contracts for coaches that are performance based and that is the norm the world over,” he said.

Miriam Sibanda, the Zimbabwe Women’s Soccer League leader said the women’s game was getting little support from the secretariat led by chief executive Jonathan Mashingaidze.

The Premier Soccer League chairman Twine Phiri and his chief executive Kenny Ndebele also made their presentations before the Parliamentarians.