Moses Chunga speaks on Zifa presidency

LEGENDARY soccer personality Moses "Bambo" Chunga believes that taking over as the next Zifa president without thorough assessment of the pros and cons of the task at hand is just "like jumping into an empty swimming pool".

The former Warriors and Dynamos skipper, regarded in some sections as the greatest ever player to emerge from Zimbabwe, has been rumoured to be angling for the top Zifa post, but when contacted for confirmation, Chunga neither denied nor confirmed that he could be vying for the Zifa presidency.

He said he could only consider becoming the next Zifa president only after key stakeholders approached him.

"I am sure you can tell by the situation on the ground that taking over as the next Zifa president without thorough assessment of the pros and cons of the task at hand is just 'like jumping into an empty swimming pool'.

"If I am approached by key stakeholders of the administration of the game, I can consider vying for the post.

After all, this is only for two years, therefore the nation can only expect to get promising initiatives, but cannot expect the next boss to take Zimbabwe to the World Cup in the coming two years when we are not even taking part in the qualifiers.

"The bottom line is that whoever comes in must undertake a thorough analysis of how he or she expects to turn around things in a debt-ridden organisation. I can be the next Zifa president only if the people running football at the moment and the nation at large feel I should take over. Otherwise just waking up and declaring one's interest could be synonymous with jumping into an empty swimming pool," diplomatically responded Chunga.

The highest office in domestic football administration fell vacant recently after disgraced president Cuthbert Dube resigned moments before the holding of a Zifa Extraordinary General Meeting whose agenda was to kick him out of office.

The Dube administration, which has long passed its sell-by date as it presided over the freefall of the nation's standards of the game of football since 2010, tried in vain, on numerous occasions, to derail the EGM that eventually saw him off.

While Dube pledged to employ his business management acumen and connections to source sponsorship for the bankrupt football association during his election campaign manifesto in 2010, the man suddenly tried without much success to turn himself into the sponsor.

For some bizarre and probably inexplicable reason the Zifa boss used his personal properties as collateral to borrow money for the association's expenses and the nation will not be expecting a repeat of Dube's forgettable era.

As the nation braces for the December 5 elections to chose the new Zifa president, a number of names apart from Chunga have been thrown around including the charismatic Prophetic Healing and Deliverance leader, Walter Magaya, veteran sports journalist Charles "CNN" Mabika and flamboyant Harare businessman Phillip Chiyangwa.

However, even though some stakeholders feel that Magaya is the right person for the job, the man of the cloth has distanced himself from the customarily controversial job.

Magaya last week dismissed suggestions that he was positioning himself to become the next president of the debt-ridden association.

A fair share of key stakeholders of the game of football in the country still believe that a former player would do a better job as Zifa president.

Borrowing the Zambian template, where legendary Kalusha Bwalya was given the mandate to lead the neighbouring country's football association and successfully did so, some believe that a former player with legendary status would be equal to the task.

Nonetheless, others like Mutare-based football administrator Cecilia Gambe think differently.

"I would have wanted a former national team player coming in as a board member. Currently. we already have one former national team player in the board and that is okay.

"The challenge that I see with a former national team player is that some of them have made names as players, but they are not necessarily good leaders. Some have lost touch with things on the ground in Zimbabwe cur- rently.

"For example, if we give this post to a person like Bruce Grobbelaar, he has been away for quite some time and might not be aware of the changes that have happened over the years in the economy and everything.

"He might not also know where to source money to run the game because the traditional sources of money like corporates are also surviving from hand to mouth," Gambe told this newspaper in an interview last week.