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Grace Chingoma Senior Sports Reporter
ZIMBABWE will soon be making a welcome return to international junior soccer tournaments following the lifting of the bans which were imposed by the Confederation of African Football on several countries, making every country in the 54-member organisation eligible to participate in the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers next year.

The Under-17 and Under-20 Africa Cup of Nations Cup would be held in 2017 in Madagascar and Zambia respectively.

Zimbabwe last participated in the continental youth tournaments qualifiers in 2012 and did not take part in this year’s Under-17 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers as well as the 2015 Under-20 Africa Cup of Nations which were staged in March.

However, CAF gave a new lease of life to all its member countries as they avoided the risk of having some countries miss the back-to-back tournaments.

The countries were banned for a number of offences which included age-cheating and failure to fulfil return matches.

Interestingly, the Zimbabwe Under-17 and Under-20 soccer teams, who in the public domain are believed to have been banned after failing to fulfil return matches, were never officially banned or fined by caf but at the same time were somehow not considered for the qualifiers of the AFCON tournaments finals which were played in Niger and Senegal respectively.

The 2015 Under-17 Africa Cup of Nations was won by Mali while Nigeria won the Under-20 tournament as Zimbabwe watched all the action from the sidelines.

The axe fell on Zimbabwean youth teams in 2012 when firstly the Under-20 team failed to fulfil their return leg in Angola in an African Championship qualifier after ZIFA cancelled the trip at the last minute, citing lack of funds.

The Young Warriors were trailing 0-1 after they had lost the first leg at Rufaro.

As if that was not enough, the national Under-17 team again failed to travel to Congo for the reverse fixture in November as they were trailing 1-2 with ZIFA failing to secure money for the airfares.

Both teams haven’t been in action since then and were only confined to the cosafa tournaments which are meant for teams from the Southern African Region.

But all that is set to be history now as Zimbabwe is now back in the fold and yesterday ZIFA chief executive Jonathan Mashingaidze confirmed the participation of both teams in the AFCON qualifiers.

“We were never banned (from these youth tournaments) and a lot was going on at that time. But we are definitely going to participate in the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers for the Under-20s and the Under-17s and we are going to confirm our participation before the deadline.

“Mind you, we can talk about 2018 Africa Cup of Nations for the Warriors and the 2022 World Cup but if we are not competing at these junior tournaments then we will not be doing anything in terms of developing our soccer.

“We have received the letter from CAF inviting us to participate in these junior tournaments and we have to confirm our participation before December 31 and we are going to do that,” said Mashingaidze.

caf director of communications Junior Binyam told BBC Sport that the organisation decided to lift the bans “so as not to deprive youths of these countries to miss back-to-back competitions”.

And 15 countries which had been banned from the two youth tournaments which does not include Zimbabwe have been cleared.

Nations such as Benin, Burundi, Central African Republic, Guinea Bissau, South Sudan and Kenya had their bans lifted and are free to join all the African countries in the qualifiers which are likely to start next year.

Yesterday, ZIFA technical director Maxwell Takaendesa Jongwe, confirmed that they have since received invitation letters from CAF pertaining the two Africa Cup of Nations tournaments for the junior teams.

Jongwe said while they officially never received a ban from CAF after they failed to send the Under-17 and Under-20 teams to Congo and Angola respectively, they were somehow frozen from action as caf remained mum when they enquired about the 2015 tournaments.

However, the former CAPS United coach embraced the development and said they had already set the ball rolling in terms of the selection of players around the country as they anticipated playing in the cosafa tournament, which have since been shelved.

Jongwe said the national Under-20 team coach Jairosi Tapera and provincial coaches are inviting players from schools, clubs and academies for selections and the exercise, which started in Midlands, has also been done in Masvingo and Mutare.

“We were targeting cosafa and wanted a programme that would have every player showcase his talent.

“We will continue with that programme and now that there is no longer cosafa, this comes as a blessing in disguise and we will continue with our selections in the other provinces.

“There is also need to seriously engage the schools because for the Under-17 players, some are not in academies but are in schools, so there is a need to formulate a working formula.

“For football to grow, we need to start from the youth teams and Zimbabwe have been missing this chance.

“But we are glad now. When the Young Warriors teams didn’t fulfil their return matches, ZIFA wrote to CAF to explain the situation of financial constraints but CAF never practically wrote any communication to effect the ban but Zimbabwe missed this year’s AFCON editions.

“When I came into ZIFA, I wrote to CAF to have our teams considered but they remained mum and this is not the time to blame anyone or find out what really transpired but time to look into the future and prepare for these games.

“Despite the tight budget we have been working under, we will fulfil the selections in all the remaining seven provinces,” said Jongwe.