By Petros Kausiyo and Grace Chingoma
Murape Murape became the latest victim of Dynamos’ poor season with the assistant coach being the first to be fired as the Glamour Boys management began to make technical changes which could see Lloyd Mutasa also following suit by the weekend.
Sources, however, revealed last night that club board chairman Bernard Marriot Lusengo had not sanctioned Murape’s axing and he could still sit on the technical bench when the Glamour Boys face Tsholotsho.
“Yes (Dynamos president, Kenny) Mubaiwa told Murape that he has been fired but when they got out of the meeting, Marriot indicated to him that he should still report for duty tomorrow (today),” said the sources.
“So it will be interesting to see whether he will be allowed to sit on the bench or not.”
Mubaiwa last night said Murape had been fired. The Dynamos boss claimed Murape’s sentiments in a newspaper article, in which he felt the club did not have quality players, was “not in sync with the vision of the club”.
Mubaiwa felt Murape was not qualified to comment about Dynamos pre-season preparations as he had only rejoined the club in June.
“As for Murape, we have fired him with immediate effect. We are not happy with what he said in the newspapers,” said Mubaiwa.
“How can he say we had a poor pre-season and we did not get quality players when he only arrived in June? He certainly doesn’t understand the vision that we have and the hard work that has been put to try and win titles this year.”
Repeated efforts to get a comment from Murape were fruitless as his phone went unanswered. Mubaiwa said the decision to fire Murape was announced at a review meeting his management held with the technical crew yesterday, which the former skipper also attended.
It was at that meeting that Mutasa was also advised of the axe that is looming over his head, with the Dynamos coach now set to preside over his last league match this afternoon when the ailing giants host Tsholotsho at Rufaro.
“We had a meeting with the technical crew this afternoon and we told them we are not happy at all and I really think we need to make some changes to revive the team,” said Mubaiwa.
“We told Lloyd that we think the task has proved to be too much for him. As coaches, they acknowledged the results are unacceptable and they said the difficulties were part of football but we said that is the failure.
“So, at the end of it all, we told them that we are now looking for people who can take over and take the team to another level and as soon as we get the replacements, we will make the changes.
“We have a game tomorrow against Tsholotsho and we will see how it goes after that. If we get a replacement by the weekend so be it, he will start immediately.” The Herald
