The Sunday News
Mehluli Sibanda, Senior Sports Reporter
THE Zifa technical and development committee yesterday met and approved exemptions for five local coaches, who include some of the legends of the game locally, Moses Chunga, Luke Petros, Agent Sawu as well as Amin Soma Phiri.
Bryton Malandule, the committee chairperson confirmed that Chunga, Petros, Sawu, Soma Phiri, Bongani Mafu and Shadreck Magurasave had been given the green light to coach in the Premier Soccer League without Caf A. All the other coaches are holders of Caf B while Mafu has a Uefa B.
Malandule said they do not want to be seen punishing coaches who have Caf B who aspire to coach in the Premier League and have coached in the PSL before.
“Zifa is aware of the plight of the coaches that have got the B licence that have not been able to upgrade themselves to the qualification since the beginning of 2017. We have exempted the following coaches who applied for exemption, Moses Chunga, Luke Petros, Bongani Mafu, Agent Sawu, Shadreck Magurasave, Amin Soma Phiri,” Malandule said.
Petros got WhaWha promoted from the Zifa Central Region Division One while Magurasave has just been appointed coach of Tenax, the champions of the Eastern Region. The two coaches were in danger of not being able to sit on their teams’ benches had they not been exempted.
“We exempt a coach who has got a Caf B qualification, a coach who has practised at the highest level and a coach that has got other qualifications on top of the Caf B, it is a plus for that coach when they apply for an exemption. It should be the initiative of the coach to apply for an exemption, we cannot just give a blanket exemption to say that everyone who has got a Caf B is then exempted because the association has not been able to offer Caf A,’’ he said.
Bongani Mafu
The issue of Caf qualifications has been a contentious one in Zimbabwe with Zifa insisting that coaches have the A licence while the association has not had a course in years. Malandule explained that Caf did raise some issues relating to the qualifications and sought to make then uniform with the rest of the world.
“It is true that Zifa stopped offering Caf courses in 2017, there are a couple of issues that Caf raised in terms of the quality of education, not only in Zimbabwe but in a number of African countries, the major issue was the need to standardise the Caf qualification to align it with the rest of the world so that when somebody is in possession of a Caf qualification, it is the same qualification the world over,’’ Malandule said.
Agent Sawu
Zifa recently advertised posts in technical director’s office, which Malandule said should be filled by next month, something that should pave way for the national association to be given the green light by Caf to start offering the courses again.
“In Zimbabwe, fortunately we have a qualified technical director who is a Caf instructor but what then we need to do is to make sure that we are covered in terms of human resources in the office of the TD, as you have seen in the past we have advertised positions for technical officers, we hope to be recruiting four technical officers in the next coming weeks.
“We will actually be shortlisting today (Saturday), from the people that have qualified, to ensure that we have a fully fledged technical department, so this would be addressed soon this year then we will then contact Caf and prove that in terms of resourcing the office of the technical director we have the requisite personnel, because when the Caf instructors came last year, they raised those concerns because of the financial challenges that the association has you find that there is only the TD in office in terms of a qualified person in the technical directors office,’’ Malandule said.
Other coaches who have been exempted to coach without Caf A in the past are Sunday Chidzambwa, Joey Antipas, Cosmas “Tsano” Zulu and Thulani Sibanda.
