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Prophet Magaya

IT’S a sign of the madness, rampant in our football, that until Wednesday night, when Prophet Walter Magaya donated R560 000 to the Warriors, their trip to the 2015 COSAFA Cup in South Africa was hanging in the balance.

Remarkably, this is a tournament that was confirmed in November last year, giving regional football associations a full six months to prepare for it, and the fixtures and kick-off times were announced exactly a month ago.

But, given the chaos that is now part of the DNA of our football administration, nothing had been planned for the Warriors’ trip to South Africa, where they play their first game on Sunday, until Prophet Magaya chipped in with a last-minute rescue package.

While we should hail Prophet Magaya for his wonderful gesture, and love for his national team, it shouldn’t blind us from another harsh reality of the shortcomings of our football leaders at 53 Livingstone Avenue.

Of course, times are tough but if you can’t plan — for your flagship team’s travel arrangements for a whole six months — and wait for a Good Samaritan to bail you out, just days before the tournament gets underway, it gives ammunition to those who argue that you don’t deserve to be leading such a national portfolio like ZIFA.

If you can’t arrange the team’s trip to South Africa, who are just across the border, how can we expect the same leadership to successfully plan for the Warriors trip to Guinea, for a 2017 Nations Cup qualifier.

How can we trust the same men, despite all the meaningless assurances they have been giving us in the past few months, that they can not only sort out the mess created by their failure to pay former Warriors coach, Valinhos, which led to our expulsion from the 2018 World Cup qualifiers and we will be back in the battles for a place in Russia?

Is it no wonder that despite ZIFA chief executive, Jonathan Mashingaidze, telling the nation that the Valinhos issue would have been resolved by the middle part of this month, nothing has happened on that front, and chances of a resolution of that damaging case remain very remote?

What is very clear is that our football leaders have a serious credibility problem, which has pushed potential sponsors far away from their stinking stable, and as long as they continue to manage the national game, in such a shambolic manner, we should not expect any success stories to be written by our Warriors or any of our representative national teams.

Our players don’t derive inspiration, anymore, from being called into camp for national duty and chaos always stalks the Warriors’ camp, now and again, because there is a feeling, among the players, that they will be given a raw deal.

That was the case last year, when our home-based Warriors did very well at the African Nations Championships, where they finished fourth but, after having been promised half the $250 000 earnings as a bonus, ZIFA only gave them $30 000 and the coach of that team, Ian Gorowa, still feels betrayed up to now and has threatened to also take his case to FIFA.

Some of the players, who were given that raw deal by ZIFA, like goalkeeper George Chigova, are back for the COSAFA Cup campaign and while the association has long forgotten that it abused them, they still carry that pain and, in such a scenario, it’s difficult to expect them to deliver all the time they plunge into battle when they are carrying such emotional baggage.

If Prophet Magaya has given ZIFA about $80 000, in just the past two months, which isn’t a loan but a donation, doesn’t this expose the association’s president, Cuthbert Dube, who injected his money into the organisation, in similar fashion, in the form of loans when he is the man who should be finding solutions to the financial challenges that are always stalking his organisation?

Dube has been using the funds that he injected into ZIFA as a weapon, to hold on to power, but now that people like Prophet Magaya are coming along, and also pouring substantial funds into the organisation without asking for something in return, it’s helping to expose our football leader for what he truly is.