Wellington Mpandare the Zimbabwe National Football Team manager has sensationally alleged that parents of England based players are colluding with their children not come to Zimbabwe and play for the national team in Zimbabwe.
This is contained in an interview with one of country’s radio stations Star FM.
A couple weeks ago Mpandare aka Dewa was on social media saying the national team might perform badly. Citing a plethora of reasons. Ranging from poor preparations to almost accusing ZIFA of not caring. One then wonders how the ZIFA President Dr. Philip Chiyangwa still allows such kind of a manager for the national team to continue working with the team. While exposing the supposed short comings of the association. But goes ahead to punish certain players accusing them of masterminding a revolt. If the manager can make such claims then it goes deeper in preempting the outcome of the Warriors encounters in future.
“There is no doubt that we are in a very tough group and we need to understand that, qualifying ahead of the DRC and Congo-Brazzaville is not like qualifying ahead of Swaziland and Malawi and a Guinea side that was out-of-sorts in that campaign because of issues related to Ebola in their homeland.” Mpandare wrote in one part.
A team manager speaks parably to attack the association leadership, when a team captain and his vice impress upon their peers they are called mercenaries. To me the only set back was that it happened in the presence of State Vice President. Beyond Zifa had been for s long time inviting that action from the boys.
If they perform badly, the manager will just tell them national I told you so.
This time around Mpandare has gone on to claim parents of United Kingdom based players, are influencing their children from travelling to Zimbabwe. In the hope that the parents can continue enjoying their claim of refugee status they could be enjoying in the United Kingdom.
This statement rather callous for a team leader.
There are chiefly a certain numbers of players that have been called to duty for their country of decent. Most if not all these players were born in the United Kingdom and hold British Passports. The mentioned players are premiership player Tendayi Darikwa, Marcaulley Bonne, Kundai Benyu, Trystan Naydan and Leicester Under 18 star player Tinashe.
These claims of parents influencing their children might just have put a damper on these players wearing the green and yellow shirt for the Warriors in the near future. Surely these parents might not take kindly having their intelligences insulted in public like that.
It might be true some of some Zimbabweans might have cooked up stories from back home and abused the loopholes in the system in the hope of obtaining legal status to remain in the United Kingdom. But undressing these targeted parents like that in the media is preposterous and poor public relationship from Mpandare.
Certainly a number of people in Europe have issues with Zimbabwe, it’s no secret but Mpandare and his handlers should have done well to insulate certain things. Find a good landing ground. It won’t be long before these boys get accosted in the UK by the unfriendly press on the status stay of their parents in the UK.
For one Mpandare has in one conversation with Tendayi Darikwa, the youngstar is said to have asked a sad and sorry question. “DOES ZIMBABWE EVEN HAS HOTELS”. Whether the boy was joking or not, surely it flies flat for an authority to unpack that as straight statement. Instead of taking the initiative of letting the boy have more information about the country of his parents origin Mpandare unleashes what I would describe as anti-Zimbabwean publicity. He should be helping the boy rather than portraying the youngster as dumbest and stupidest character. That’s just what describes that line of questioning.
Bonne once played for Zimbabwe in friendly with Morroco. The youngster flew directly to Morroco. As such the boy is said to have indicated he is willing to join Zimbabwe as it participates in the regional Cosafa tournament slated to begin late next month. But he is asking to join the team in South Africa rather meet up with the rest. This may add weight to Mpandare’s claim of parents involvement. But it still remains highly speculative.
If these are the abhoring questions the questions deterring these boys to come to Zimbabwe. It wouldn’t be bad to probably to just invite the boys on fully paid flight into Zimbabwe not for football reasons but to have them get a feel of what’s obtaining in the country even for a single day. Promise them to just spend a few hours in Harare alone and fly back. It might be consistent in terms of the level bad presentations that could received in the past.
But they are not the only European based players alone. They are on break in most European and especially English leagues. Invite them home to disstigmatise their ill opinions.
Lambasting them in the public is not the fairest way to do. Especially coming from a team manager himself and a supposed respected football analyst.
It is hoped that Mpandare would do be better in future.
