It’s confirmed. The Chibuku Super Cup final will be staged at Zimbabwe’s traditional football venue, Rufaro Stadium on November 11 pitting pre-tournament outsiders Harare City, and How Mine.
By MICHAEL KARIATI
It was in this stadium in 1973 that Highlanders won the first ever Chibuku Super Cup, then known as the Chibuku Trophy, after hammering Mhangura 3-0. The final of the trophy returns to Zimbabwe’s traditional football venue after spells at Mandava Stadium in 2014, the National Sports Stadium in 2015 and Baobab Stadium in Mhondoro-Ngezi in 2016.
Since its return as the Chibuku Super Cup in 2014, after being last staged in 1986 when Highlanders again won it, the Chibuku Super Cup has been full of entertainment, shocks and surprises as evidenced by the 2017 edition in which all the traditional giants of Zimbabwean football — Caps United, Dynamos and Highlanders — failed to reach even the semi-finals.
Even the rising giants of the Zimbabwean game, FC Platinum who won the Chibuku Super Cup in 2014 and reached the final in 2016 and defending champions, Ngezi Platinum Stars, fell by the wayside long before the real battle for the trophy had started.
It should also be placed on record that since its return three years ago, Caps United, Dynamos and Highlanders have not won the tournament, although DeMbare had the honour of reaching the final in 2015 before losing out 2-1 to Harare City.
This is clear evidence that the winds of change that are blowing across world football have also hit Zimbabwe and that there are no longer any small teams in the local game of football.
However, despite their vast improvement on the field of play, teams like How Mine and Harare City have not been able to attract huge crowds and chances are that the Chibuku Super Cup final will attract a small crowd, unless something is done to attract more fans to Rufaro Stadium.
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Already, the Premier Soccer League (PSL) is battling with low crowd attendances even in matches involving crowd-pullers like Highlanders and Dynamos. On that premise, there is a likelihood that there will be very few people should the gate charges remain pegged at $3 for the Chibuku Super Cup final.
Football is about entertaining the crowd that gathers to watch the game and the question is: What would the outside world say about Zimbabwean football should the biggest knockout tournament in the country be watched by a crowd of 1 000 people or less?
That would be a mockery of the tournament that gives birth to the team that represents the country in the next edition of the CAF Confederation Cup — the second biggest club football competition on the continent.
What the PSL needs to do is to probably reduce the gate charges to a dollar or to at least $2. Or they should negotiate with their sponsors to give a 1,25 litre of Chibuku Super as a token to every football fan who pays his $3 to watch the game.
The most important thing here is to have as many people at Rufaro Stadium to watch the final than the income that would be generated from the gates. It is better to have 10 000 people paying a dollar to watch the game than to have 1 000 people in the stadium paying $3.
The Chibuku Super Cup is the biggest knockout tournament in the country and it should live up to that billing irrespective of whoever is playing. A crowd of around 7 000 or more would not be bad for a final between Harare City and How Mine.
However, it is up to the authorities to see how best they can attract such a crowd, considering the low-key status of the teams that are battling for the trophy, and a place in the Caf Confederation Cup.
Moving in the right direction but …
Zimbabwe Football Association’s technical director, Wilson Mutekede, has set the ball rolling by inviting some of Zimbabwe’s foreign-based players, including Kudzai Benyu of Celtic in Scotland and Tendai Darikwa of Nottingham Forest in England, who have never featured for the Warriors before.
This is a step in the right direction as Zimbabwe tries to move away from the notion that the Warriors are a two-man team, and that without Knowledge Musona and Khama Billiart, there is no team.
Mutekede, however, has just scratched the surface. Although Zimbabwe are not in the same league with Nigeria who have over 1 000 professional footballers scattered all over the globe, the small southern African nation has its fair share of football talent abroad, which needs to be identified and given a chance.
Zimbabwe’s next international game is in March next year, and between now and then, this is the time to find where the Zimbabwean players are, try them in friendly matches and sort out their travel documents, so that when competition time comes, everything is in order.
Word doing rounds is that Trystan Nydam of Ipswich Town in the English Championship would be in the country for about a week.
This is the time to tie down the youngster to the Warriors before the country loses him out to England.
The country should not do a repeat of what happened in 2012 when Bradley Pritchard came all the way from England, only to be discovered on the day of the Warriors match that he was not eligible to turn out for Zimbabwe since he did not have Zimbabwean identity documents.
The problem, however, is that Mutekede is on interim basis as Warriors coach and his project might be a waste of time and money as the next Warriors coach might not be interested in the players Mutekede has picked and given a chance.
Zifa should decide on the national team coach right now and give him the time to build his team. This is the only way Zimbabwe will have a team in place by March that would be ready to rock and roll.
March might look far away, but the truth is that, time is running out.
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