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Phillip Zulu Special Correspondent

THE much-awaited ZIFA Extraordinary General Meeting scheduled for today in Harare brings forth the evils, dangers and pains of our collapsed football that’s suffocating under the FIFA ban.

How soon we forget that modern sport is an industry that feeds multitudes and, conversely, drowns them when mismanagement of the game is entrenched recklessly.

How soon we forget that Mafia gangsters that captured football were in cohorts with the very same councillors when they elected all the previous executives that hatched these brood of vipers devouring our game for so long and unashamedly.

The very same councillors who elected Felton Kamambo four years ago, converge again today to rescue and rescind the decisions they made before.

This meeting invokes our disquiet in the mayhem of the FIFA ban and the consequences of languishing in the wilderness of not exposing all our junior and senior national teams for both women and men, lack of international transfers of our players, loss of earnings and grants from FIFA.

Indeed, we call upon the very councillors to act with caution and national interests to deliver the important decision of recalling Kamambo and his accomplices.

To err is human and the bravest thing to do is not to extend the fault lines of allowing these Mafia gangsters’ reincarnations to the deity of despondency.

To be or not, Kamambo should not be resurrected by any stretch of the mind but, should be relieved of his duties without fail so that we start from ground ZERO.

The damage has been done. Zimbabwean football has suffered from poor administration and it needs some brave and dedicated men and women to get bring back sanity.

Zero confidence, zero junior football development programmes, zero coach education pathways, shambolic recruitment of staff and personnel, captured football and its Mafia selection process.

Won’t we have to sing the redemption song to free our football?

As we all feel the pains of crashing out in every major international tournament — Olympics in Tokyo, CHAN in Yaounde, Qatar World Cup 2022, AFCON, including all the women and junior national teams’ fixtures — let us all sing the redemption song and save our football.

Our total disgust at the incumbent leader is within our minimum expectations of how best to develop our junior structures that have been neglected for far too long, lack of knowledge in managing modern sport, failure to attract corporate sponsors and the extreme turmoil in the FIFA world ranking that has seen Zimbabwe tumbling in downward spiral.

Kamambo and his accomplices should have the decency of allowing change to take place.

They should realise that the damage done by their excesses of extreme greed, mediocrity and gangsterism, adversely affected our football status quo and it will take years of hard work and robust planning to achieve decent goals in major areas of our minimum expectations.

All egos should be deflated, this is about national pride and interests of the majority.

Cool heads must seize this moment and help pen a new trajectory in our football history as we hope to be readmitted back into international football.