NEWLY-CROWNED Chibuku Super Cup Ngezi Platinum Stars are seeking an audience with their sponsors, Zimplats, to see whether they could be able to represent Zimbabwe in the 2017 edition of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) Confederation Cup.
BY MICHAEL KARIATI
Club chairman Jeremiah Getiseni revealed that they would be meeting their sponsors sometime this week to seek a financial guarantee for further participation in the pan-African football competition.
He said he was hopeful that they would receive the much-needed approval to compete in Africa.
“We are going to sit down with our sponsors and see how far we can go. I don’t see us failing to participate,” said Getiseni.
Coach Tonderayi Ndiraya said it would be great to play in Africa, adding that he was confident that those in authority would allow them to take part.
“Playing in Africa has always been our wish and that is what we wanted. We hope that we are going to be allowed to participate. We hope to start our preparations as early as possible,” said Ndiraya.
The former Dynamos player and coach revealed that he wanted to strengthen his squad by acquiring new players for the African safari — should the journey materialise.
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“We want to bring in new players who can help us in that competition. There are one or two areas that need to be beefed up,” said Ndiraya, who last year lost the Chibuku Super Cup final to Harare City while in charge of DeMbare.
CAF have given all national football associations up to November 30 to register teams which will represent their countries in the Confederation Cup next year.
Ngezi Platinum Stars, who hail from the mining settlement of Ngezi in Mhondoro-Ngezi rural areas, qualified to represent Zimbabwe after lifting the country’s premier knockout tournament — the Chibuku Super Cup — after beating fellow platinum miners FC Platinum 3-1.
By doing so, Ngezi became the third team in Zimbabwean football history after Blackpool and Shabanie Mine to win a major trophy in their maiden year in premiership football.
Blackpool won the Zifa Cup in 1994, while Shabanie Mine took the BP League Cup after coming straight from Division One.
Apart from the Confederation Cup — funds permitting — Zimbabwe will also be represented in the CAF Champions League by the team that wins the Castle Lager Premier Soccer League title.
The best Zimbabwean clubs have done in continental football was Dynamos’ appearance in the 1998 CAF Champions League final where they lost 4-2 to Asec Mimosas of the Ivory Coast.
However, the best a Zimbabwean club has done in the Confederation Cup came in the form of Blackpool, who in 1995 reached the semifinals of the then Africa Cup of Winners’ Cup, which has been renamed the CAF Confederation Cup with a few changes in its set up.
Ndiraya, however, said they would be going all out to do better than what Dynamos and Blackpool did.
