Sports / Soccer
Matabeleland gears up for the World Football Cup
04 Oct 2017 at 16:56hrs | Views
The Matabeleland Football Confederacy has commenced its preparations to play in next year's World Football Cup that will be held in London. The Cup will be hosted by Confederation of Independent Football Associations CONIFA. CONIFA was established in 2013 as a non-profit organisation comprising football teams from small countries, nations, unrecognised states, cultural regions, minorities and isolated territories around the world. Their inaugural World Cup tournament took place in Sweden in 2014 and the organisation plans to hold one every two years.
Matabeleland Football Confederacy was then established in 2016 and is administered by the Save Matabeleland Coalition which acts as the Administrative Agent. The Association immediately applied and gained CONIFA affiliation status in the same year. In the last 8 months MFC has been organizing and mobilizing soccer loving communities in Matabeleland with an aim to start a developmental League for the Matabeleland peoples. MFC seeks to use soccer for Peace Building, Restorative Justice Hope and the Transformation of the Matabeleland people who have in the past decades suffered untold suffering including a gruesome genocide which has remained unaddressed and ignored to date.
The Matabeleland select team will join the other 15 teams that will play in London next year. The teams include Barawa, Kabylia, Tibet, Tamil Eelam, and United Koreans of japan, Panjab, Abkhazia, Padania, Northern Cyprus, Western Armenia, Ellan Vanin, Felvidek, Szekely Land, Cascadia and Kiribati. It is against this background that the team has begun its preparations for the tournament that will be held from the 31st of May 2017 to the 10th of June 2017. Currently the MFC is awaiting the official draw for the 2018 CONIFA World Football Cup will take place in London later this year and has already launched a fundraising bid to cover the costs of preparation and participation link https://gogetfunding.com/matabeleland-to-worldfootball- cup-london-2018/.
Busani Sibindi the Matabeleland Football Confederacy President said: "The team has already started to train extensively because we aim to win the cup and bring it home to create a long lasting legacy for the people of Matabeleland who have endured so much suffering and marginalization for decades. We will not be deterred by anything or anyone and you can see this in the boy's faces. This competition will be a beginning of a new era as we build a legacy that will forever be carried with pride."
Matabeleland Football Confederacy was then established in 2016 and is administered by the Save Matabeleland Coalition which acts as the Administrative Agent. The Association immediately applied and gained CONIFA affiliation status in the same year. In the last 8 months MFC has been organizing and mobilizing soccer loving communities in Matabeleland with an aim to start a developmental League for the Matabeleland peoples. MFC seeks to use soccer for Peace Building, Restorative Justice Hope and the Transformation of the Matabeleland people who have in the past decades suffered untold suffering including a gruesome genocide which has remained unaddressed and ignored to date.
Busani Sibindi the Matabeleland Football Confederacy President said: "The team has already started to train extensively because we aim to win the cup and bring it home to create a long lasting legacy for the people of Matabeleland who have endured so much suffering and marginalization for decades. We will not be deterred by anything or anyone and you can see this in the boy's faces. This competition will be a beginning of a new era as we build a legacy that will forever be carried with pride."
Source - Thubelihle Mafu
