The Sunday News
Mehluli Sibanda, Senior Sports Reporter
HIGHLANDERS striker, Prince Dube is not moving away from the club despite having impressed on trials in China.
Seeing that the January transfer window is closing on Friday, it effectively means that the player is staying put at Highlanders until the next opportunity for him to move comes in July.
Dube came home at the start of last week after attending trials for almost a month at Shaanxi Chang’an Athletic, a team that plays in China’s League One, that country’s second tier division.
The 22-year-old was given days off from training by Highlanders last week and should start fine tuning for the new season with his teammates this week. Highlanders chief executive officer, Nhlanhla Dube said the player met the new coach, Mark Harrison, with the two having close to an hour of discussions.
“Prince Dube is back in the country, he was given off days from training, he has been on trials for almost a month so his workload has been too much. The boy is staying put, he has been given days to recuperate, he has already met the new coach, they spent close to an hour catching up,” the Bosso CEO said.
While the Warriors striker is said to have excelled in China, Shaanxi Chang’an Athletic could not sign him because they were hoping to release a foreign player whose slot Dube would have then taken up, something which did not happen.
“Officially he is not being taken on now, the way they would have wanted was to fill a slot for another player because they had exhausted their foreign player quota, they did not sign him for the reason that the gap they were looking to exploit did not materialise,’’ said Dube.
Since it was not possible for Shaanxi Chang’an Athletic to sign Dube, the talks with Highlanders never got to the negotiating phase.
“We never got to a negotiating stage, you only negotiate if you are signing the player.”
With Dube’s contract with Highlanders expiring at the end of this year, Bosso have to find the resources to extend his stay or sell him in the next transfer window. The striker could attract clubs from better leagues if he impresses at the African Nations Championship set for Cameroon in April. Dube was the joint leading goal scorer in the Chan qualifiers on four goals together with Patrick Kaddu of Uganda.
— @Mdawini_29
