By Grace Chingoma
Former Warriors skipper and legend Moses “Bambo” Chunga has called on the Premier Soccer League to have a relook at the Under-19 policy which requires each club to register five junior players as age cheating, which is currently rampant in local football, has affected the value addition to the game.
Chunga, who is also president of the Soccer Coaches Union of Zimbabwe, yesterday said the policy has become open to rampant abuse as age cheating has become part of the DNA of local football, starting from schools.
The former Dynamos midfield dynamo feels it is high time that this malpractice attracts a criminal charge so that people are deterred from it. Chunga said punitive ways may help in eradicating the scourge.
“It is only that we are not applying the rules, because isn’t it that if you misrepresent facts it is a crime on its own. Those who tamper with birth certificates or passports of athletes should face the consequences,” said Chunga.
The former Dynamos and CAPS United coach said age cheating is so rampant in football that such noble ideas as a mandatory requirement to register five junior players for PSL clubs is not really adding value to local football despite the policy being in practice for the past five years.
Currently, he says, the system was merely recycling old players and “born again” Under-20 players as some clubs would be under pressure to register competent players rather than real young players who may take time “to spark” in the top flight.
“Age-cheating is immoral and in Zimbabwe it has become contagious.
“It is now part of our DNA to fix the ages of the athletes.
“I have been trying to engage the relevant authorities that sometimes our policies tend to encourage age cheating and people are put under pressure.
“They should scrap the Under-20 policy, allow clubs to register just 30 players and then pursue other means and ways of exposing young talent maybe by having a mandatory junior league for all the Premiership teams or try to find a better way to integrate the Under-20 players into the main system.
“The policy requires each of the 16 clubs to have five Under-20 players, but do these 80 players exist? if we had these 80 genuine Under-20 players it would have added value to our junior national teams.
“We are cheating and lying to ourselves.
“This is honestly not working and how many clubs are effectively using these players, that is if they genuinely exist.
“If you look at a club like Dynamos, maybe it was only Tatenda Mukuruva playing as the Under-20 player and the others were not given game time.
“If the system was working we would have seen them playing and graduating into the age-group teams and eventually the national teams since this policy was introduced,” said Chunga.
His call to stop the cancer, which is threatening to destroy the sport, comes at a time when local sports stakeholders have requested Government, through its relevant legislative and judicial structures and instruments, to produce appropriate and modern high-tech and digital preventive and detecting measures supported by deterrent legal and judicial instruments and provisions that prevent and criminalise cheating in all its forms at all levels in sport.
Following a Sport Convention on match-fixing and corruption, which was held in Harare last month, the national sport associations agreed to develop strategies, structures, systems and programmes that mitigate age cheating and all forms of corruption in sport to guarantee a long-term sustainable sport performance trajectory for Zimbabwe.
At the same platform, it was requested as another resolution that all national sports associations and their respective organs develop databases that assist in tracking and monitoring athletes’ movements in the sport development continuum.
However, Chunga reckons that the policy has achieved minimal results.
Very few clubs such as Dynamos, have players like Tatenda Mukuruva and Kudzanai Nyakasaka, who have broken into the senior team, with the goalkeeper progressing all the way to the senior national team.
The former Dynamos star, who broke into the club’s senior team at the age of 17, says his passion remains in junior development but it should not be compromised.
Chunga is currently working with Vainona High assisting the school with the football team and he believes if such projects are taken seriously, they may produce talented players in the long run.
“There is need to go back to the drawing board and I am glad that some of us are already doing that. Schools such as Prince Edward, Churchill, Marlborough, Cornway and Mufakose High have a league which is running and Vainona are in the process to join that league.
“I have also been working with the NASH provincial head for Harare and I would want to believe that this way we will tap them young and produce real talent.
“I have just been joking with my colleagues that I hope the other schools won’t feel pressured to have players alter their ages when we meet in the competitions so that they just want to prove a point that we beat the team which is coached by Chunga,” he said. The Herald
