The Chronicle
By Mduduzi Moyo
23 May 2009
The first trimester — the first ten of the scheduled 30 games — of the Premiership has come and gone yet the Premier Soccer League is still to find a sponsor for this year’s league championship.
The traditional season opening Charity Shield has been repeatedly postponed and it is still unclear if the league will ever find a sponsor for even a single knockout tournament.
So confusing and deafening is the silence on the progress or lack thereof in the negotiations — if ever there are any that are taking place at the moment — that every ardent soccer lover has been forced to ask the question: “Just where is the current set-up likely to leave us as a soccer loving nation?”
Zimbabwean soccer has in the past been the envy of the neighbourhood but the current decline in standards seems to threaten to blight this record as sports administrators seem determined to outdo each other in running the game into the ground.
In the past, the Zimbabwean Premiership attracted top players from Malawi and Zambia with the likes of the late Derby Mankinka, Kelvin Kaindu, Ian Bakala, Haji Tambala and Joseph Kamwendo — who is turning out for the Malawi national team.
So powerful was the appeal that it attracted even players from the American league like Andrew Shoe and Kirk Fredrick.
But the current trend has seen a reverse pattern where the most prolific of our players have crisscrossed the sub-region in search of more sanely run football entities.
Needless to say that some of these sons of the soil have been ejected by poor management of the local game that they have virtually flung themselves into the footballing wilderness with reckless regard for the development of their game. One can only but painfully come to terms with the hasty and seemingly ill-informed departure of prolific goal poacher Edward Sadomba to the virtually unknown Mozambican league which to the average Zimbabwean has produced no better team than Ferroviario de Nampula.
Evans Gwekwerere also frustratedly threw himself into the arms of the lilliputan Swazi league only to reconsider and wind up with South African teams.
So! Where exactly are we going wrong with our football? From its formation in 1993 the Premier Soccer League of the modern era looked set to deliver soccer to the proverbial Canaan. Football administrators and players hailed this grand unveiling as the final tonic to the ills that had afflicted the game.
The impetus behind the formation of the league was that clubs felt that ZIFA was messing up their affairs and therefore there was a need to break away and form an independent league that would prioritise the welfare and interests of the clubs, among other developmental issues.
The inaugural leadership led by Morrison Sifelani and Chris Sibanda committed themselves to promises which 16 years down the line, remain just that — promises.
Sifelani and Sibanda assured the nation that the National Premier Soccer League, as it was known then, “shall always be regarded as a shining beacon of professionalism and transparency”. They promised clubs that viability problems and lack of sponsorship would be a thing of the past.
Even when the promises were hard to deliver, the clubs clung on to them.
A lot of people have come and gone at the PSL but it seems nothing has changed. Instead, it appears as if the clubs are actually worse off than they were then.
Many clubs have either sold their franchises in frustration or have totally collapsed. Others are soldiering on but with extreme difficulties and the reason why some clubs still exist today is simply because the powers that be at those clubs love football and therefore they are prepared to make losses in other businesses just for the love of the game.
Sponsors might give the obvious reason of viability problems in the economy in general but the most important reason is that they are shying away from the madness that has taken over football administration in this country. In other words the game has totally lost its corporate appeal and has degenerated to levels lower than a boozers’ league.
Sponsors are reluctant to risk associating of their brands with Zimbabwean soccer. Soccer has endeared itself to controversy in the way moths are drawn to a flame. Even the national team — if ever it still merits such a title — has been reduced to a basket case that patiently sits with a begging bowl for Asiatic football unknowns to dangle free packages for ineffective friendly matches that have plunged the team to the lowest rankings ever.
At the worst, the team has been devalued to a lot in a betting syndicate as our national association gets more and more addicted to these syndicates. The prize for this — a freefall on the FIFA rankings.
The side effect of all this will be suddenly felt when our “national team” is shunned by teams coming for the Confederations Cup and the World Cup as a viable warm-up partner because of its low rankings which have come about as a result of fielding ad-hoc selects against these unknown entities. I am quite certain Brazil — whom we appear to be amourously courting these days — will not be all too willing to warm-up against a team on the wrong side of 100 on the FIFA rankings.
On the domestic front, the PSL is not painting an encouraging portrait of the game either — the current committee led by Tapuwa Matangaidze is yet to achieve anything except losing out on a viable sponsorship from Econet and failing to sustain the sponsorship of CBZ.
The grapevine has it that the same Matangaidze regime that presided over the ouster of Econet by flirting with its rival NetOne three seasons ago, is now feverishly assailing Econet who look poised to be the heir-apparent to the truant CBZ. It is understood from well placed sources that the mobile communications giant has rolled out one unequivocal demand — that the entire management committee at PSL should resign.
As obvious as the sun will rise tomorrow, they will not do this! And while it remains to be seen who will blink first between the two, the soccer loving nation will continue to watch a mediocre display of what looks like football as clubs trudge on under these difficult times, waiting and hoping for a brighter day. But for how long, we wonder.
We call upon the honourable Minister David Coltart to intervene and save soccer from this seemingly irremediable calamity. Clubs have patiently taken enough of a battering.