WE HAVE just witnessed a national football disgrace. Influential and top officials at the Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA), including the past chairman and the chief executive, have been working with an Asian betting syndicate to facilitate the Zimbabwe national team to lose games for payment.
Close to 100 players, coaches and journalists are reported to be involved and are reported to have all benefitted from the scandal. Not only did the arrangement make the purported national team lose several games, but it disintegrated the soccer administration and development structures.
The national team was being put together at the last minute; a Premier League club was smuggled out of the country to Malaysia where it purported to be the national team; the ZIFA chairman is reported to have flown from Zimbabwe to Asia to get his cut of the dirty money. The CEO of ZIFA was the middle person who was arranging the trips. The team was being paid part of the money at half time to further encourage it to lose the game.
The soccer administrators, players, coaches and journalists who helped with the cover up were no longer concerned about winning games and improving Zimbabwe soccer. They seem to have been more motivated by losing games and getting paid approximately 10 times or more than what they would have been paid had they won a game.
One can argue that the inclination to be greedy is human nature considering the amount of money they were going to get from the betting criminals. However, the flip side is that if they were a winning team that is professionally run, they could also get as much or more money than they were paid to lose the games. Surely, sponsors would want to be associated with a winning team or organisation, not to mention that soccer is the most popular sport in the country.
In their bid to gain publicity by associating with a winning team and organisation, the sponsors would open their wallets generously to exploit the huge following football commands. The huge following provides a lucrative forum for advertising.
If the scandalous Zimbabwe gang were to follow that more profitable and acceptable means of getting money, there would not be risking losing their livelihoods after being caught throwing away games. In fact, there is a likelihood that they could gain as much or more money than they obtained from the darkest depths of underground football criminality.
Besides, the positive effect that these players, coaches, administrators and journalist impose would help develop football and help mentor and motivate future stars. Their success would enable the game to build infrastructure and create more opportunities for them when they retire. Right now, their lives are bleak after retiring from football (even supposing they were not caught) because the opportunities are limited. The game must be attractive, with fully developed infrastructure in order to create future opportunities.
The irony of this whole scandal is that it is the people who are entitled to develop the sport who are destroying it, all for personal gain. Another irony is that these very mercenaries want to be recognised and paid by their clubs and the nation decent rewards that are commensurate to their supposed professional stature, yet they allow themselves to be used as mere mercenaries.
Which self respecting professional can accept to be paid to deliver mediocre service? To be a loser? To always gain, not from his or her own professional accomplishments, but from the patronage of a criminal network? This is twisted logic.
Life bans are the least that we can dish out. These crooks should know that there are always consequences for all actions. Each person has to face the consequences of their actions. It is one of the basic principles that underpin the concept of justice.
One recommendation I would suggest is to stop the practice of patronage. No single individual should be bailing out the association because this is where corruption creeps in. When such a patronage system is operationalised, the line between legitimate and illegitimate conduct becomes blurred as this scandal has shown.
Rather than setting this informal arrangement, elaborate and transparent financial management structures should be put in place to administer funds. Individuals can then contribute in a transparent and lawful manner through official and non-corrupt structures. It is dangerous to maintain structures that survive on patronage because as it has been demonstrated by the scandal, the people and the organisation become beholden to that individual and his/her network.
As a way forward, the top ZIFA management, including its board of directors, should be appointed and mandated to come up with a very clear and public strategic plan that shows how they will put the organisation on a firm financial footing and football, in general, on a firm development path.
One of their key performance indicators which they will be judged by should be the financial health of ZIFA. The strategic plan must spell out the specific targets the ZIFA board must achieve and how they are going to achieve them, as well as clearly spell out the indicators that will demonstrate whether those targets are being met or not. Corrective action can be taken at any one point to salvage the situation.
The Asiagate scandal provides testimony to assertions by many past football officials, coaches (remember Ben Koufie) and players that Zimbabwe will not progress as long as the dysfunctional administration structures continue to exist. The nation needs to act decisively.