BY MUNYARADZI MADZOKERE
Harare giants CAPS United have expressed confidence that the resumption of local football mtch would help propel the club’s commercial drive, which was stifled by the Covid-19 pandemic last year.
The club made a complete overhaul of the team last year after agonisingly missing out on the 2019 league campaign to defending champions FC Platinum.
Makepekepe only retained 12 of the players, who were part of the 2019 campaign bringing about 17 mainly young and exciting players with the hope of making money from selling the players.
But then Covid-19 struck and ruined the entire football season.
“The programme has not stopped and personally I am not one person, who is always finding excuses, so I can’t blame Covid-19. “Of course, it came with challenges, but it also came with advantages some advantages that we didn’t fully utilise as a club, as a league and a football association,” CAPS United vice-chairman Nhamo Tutisani said.
“We should have used the Covid-19 period to take stock of how much of the commercialisation of the entire institution progressed toward the desired end and how much of it was derailed during and prior to the Covid-19 pandemic
“We started this programme when we had Lloyd Chitembwe as coach and then we put the foot off the pedal. We then instituted an overhaul of the main squad last season being guided by the value system, which we want to carry forward,” he said.
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Some of the young players, who joined the Harare club last season include Warriors winger Leeroy Mavhunga, Tatenda Tumba, Tatenda Munditi, Enock Karembo, Clive Rupiya and Carlos Mavhurume among others.
Other seasoned players including Ishamel Wadi, Wallace Magalane, Innocent Mucheneka, James Marufu and Ian Nyoni joined the green and white family.
However, the club lost players such as Mucheneka, Magalane and Nyoni whose contracts ran out without kicking a ball after the entire season was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
But Nhamo is confident that they still have one of the best squads in the land.
“We have a very good team, which will be difficult to beat and which also fits the culture we want to establish at the club. When we inherited CAPS United, it had its own culture. If you look at the calibre of players we used to attract they were distinct. Whether by design or default, I would like to believe a good culture attracts players,” he said.
“We want to establish a culture that attracts a certain calibre of players that we want. Our aim is to end up with a commercially attractive institution. If we do this properly the corporate world will fight to come into football and pour in their money,” he said.
Nhamo reckons that playing in empty stadiums will not make much difference for clubs because most were not even making money from gate takings prior to Covid-19.
