Several players interviewed said although they were disheartened to receive low allowances, they would play today’s tie with hearts on their sleeves. The foreign-based players said they were disappointed that Zifa had failed to raise funds to boost the morale of the players ahead of the tie against the Eagles.
“I have gone to a number of national team assignments but as I speak, I have never signed a national team contract which should inform me of how much I am going to get after the match, that is for a win or a draw.
“I think Zifa is giving us a raw deal on this issue, we need to sign contracts before we even start training so that we know what we will be playing for,” a senior player said.In a normal situation players and the technical team sign contracts before taking up national team duties.
As for the daily allowances, there has been no improvement from their last match preparations against Cape Verde and the away match to Mali in March. The situation forced a number of players to contemplate dropping from the Warriors set up in future.
“We are being given US$30 as training allowance per day which we feel is too little. Taking into consideration that we have not signed any contracts, we just feel that they have to up our daily allowances because at the end of the day we might end up with nothing at all apart from the US$150 allowances for five days we were in camp,” said another bitter player.
Contacted for comment, acting Zifa chief executive officer Munyaradzi Siwatsi said he was not at liberty to comment on the matter in the absence of his boss Jonathan Mashingaidze.
