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Ellina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
TWALUMBA coach Wilson Mutekede says their thrust is not to win the World Navi Northern Region Division One championship but to develop fresh football talent.
Mutekede said their project was focussed on developing players and, on that front, they were doing very well.
Twalumba went down 0-3 and the situation is not looking good for the side, which has now slipped two places down to 16th place on the standings.
The side also stands to lose some of their players to Premiership sides like Dynamos and Black Rhinos.

However, Mutekede said they had the capacity to recover.
“Sometimes in football you hit bad patches at the wrong time but you know when getting into the window period, with young players some of them with ambitions to play at a higher level, their focus is a bit shaken.

“We have lost Elisha Muroiwa. He is intending to move to Dynamos.
“Bright Chayambuka is also intending to move to Black Rhinos. They are just finalising the paperwork.

“And several of our youngsters have been approached by big teams and that tends to sort of shake their focus.
“Some of these clubs approach these young players and gag them and sometimes you get such performances,” said Mutekede.

Mutekede said they were a development club and they feel some of the players intending to move have matured to play at a higher level.
“The boys have matured to play at that level. We are into development and we don’t want to be seen to be blocking the advancement of their careers.

“We are building from the bottom and we have the Under-16s from Oriel. They are part of our programme and their Under-20s as well.
“We have two boys we are elevating from Oriel, midfielder Trevor Zidoro and leftback David Musonza. They are youngsters we are going to give a chance.

“We are not really into the championship at the moment. We are into development, contributing to football.
“We are going to push as much as we can and I am sure we will rise out of that position,” said Mutekede.

Mutekede said for their match against Karoi they had some challenges with their trip to Chikangwe and it affected the players.
“We are not at a crisis, we will rise. Against Karoi we unfortunately had challenges on the way. We only got into the match without warm-up because of the incident and that ended up affecting us,” Mutekede said.

The win by Karoi saw them jumping four places up the ladder to position 13.