The Sunday News
Simba Jemwa, Sports Correspondent
THE now defunct AmaZulu Football Club arrived on the scene and reconfigured the way football clubs were run in the country.
Before even the advent of Fifa Club Licensing regulations, Delma Lupepe’s side was already considered the most professional and organised club not just in the region, but in the country as well. Their executive was very cognisant of its responsibilities that they were rarely found wanting.
Mistakes are bound to occur, but at AmaZulu these were far and few in between, such was the level of efficiency within their structures. And today local football has seen the rise and rise of Premiership side Bulawayo Chiefs who have evolved from being a relegation straggler to redefine themselves as a potential title winner.
Football can never be stripped of the wider context. As a flurry of signings brought in Kelvin Madzongwe, Obadiah Tarumbwa, Obrey Chirinda, Kelvin Moyo, it didn’t just confirm Chiefs’ new found status as one of the richest clubs in the country at the moment.
After all, before the arrival of these top players, the club had not only managed to ship in a European coach with proven pedigree but also signed a kit deal with a major player in athletic apparel as well as define themselves as being notably well administered.
It didn’t even just underline the club’s emergence as a real force in football: it seemed also to symbolise the increasing might and confidence of the region itself, having fallen well behind the rest of country for much too long.
With the manner in which club owner and sponsor Lovemore Sibanda and his executive have been conducting themselves and going about their business since the club was promoted into the Premiership, comparisons with super clubs of yesteryear are hard to ignore.
And already these conversations are in the public domain.
Yesteryear super clubs were defined by flamboyance, the signing of best players in the land and proper treatment of their players. In Chiefs super clubs of yesteryear like Blackpool, Motor Action, Lengthens, and Highway have become topical again.
But it is Lupepe’s AmaZulu that Bulawayo and most if not of Zimbabwean football reminisces about when they read about Chiefs’ conquests on and off the field.
Since their promotion into the premier league in 2018, they have always looked like relegation candidates, but after surviving for two seasons, the club finally decided to up its game and begin to work towards attaining its mission to “foster professionalism in football competition”.
Before then, Chiefs were the great underachievers of Zimbabwean football. Founded in their present form in 2012 and using the border town of Plumtree as its home ground, at some point being coached by veteran coach Rahman Gumbo while in Division One, they have been flattering to deceive under successive coaches.
However, the arrival of Portuguese gaffer, Nilton Terroso who worked as Cardiff City’s head of sports science and fitness coach when the club returned to the English Premiership after a 51-year absence in 2013, looks set to change the tide.
His arrival signaled the beginning of a shift by the club towards a seat at the head of the table and perhaps even be considered as one of the top teams in the land.
But while all points to an organised and professional outfit, the reasons for the demise of Chiefs predecessors who also aspired for the same level of professionalism realised that it came at a cost.
It is all well and true to spend funds if they are there to be spent, but having a long term strategy is not just about planning but also about sustainability.
Chiefs secretary Dumisani Mantula Sibanda told a radio station last week that they were in the big league to stay.
He said they were bringing quality players so as to be able to compete and “not just to make up numbers.”
In addition, the club has also signed a lease agreement with the Bulawayo City Council to use Callies ground, which was used by the now defunct AmaZulu for training purposes.
That is also another indicator of a serious team in action. They will be neighbours with Bulawayo City FC, who managed to get the lease to use Crescent grounds.
Credit where credit is due: Bulawayo Chiefs seem to have a handle on things! Critically, the question is whether they can keep up the momentum in the long term or will sooner than later, run out of steam. AmaZulu as far as records show, did not fail, but rather were the unfortunate victims of their own success.
Lupepe’s side were undone by frictions that arose as a consequence of their legitimate claim to being one of the top football clubs in the country.
Their record speaks for itself and were it not for the club’s rivals in the league who seemed determined to frustrate Lupepe out of football, ‘Usuthu’ could easily still be somewhere in the annals of the game today.
The club was eventually disbanded after being forced to play on Saturdays, with owner Lupepe insisting that to him as a devout Seventh Day Adventist, his team must not play on the day of the sabbath.
@RealSimbaJemwa
