Don Makanyanga
Sports Reporter
FORMER Warriors goalkeeper, Bruce Grobbelaar, believes the recently launched FIFA Football for Schools (F4S) project will unlock the potential, which the country has in abundance.
ZIFA, in conjunction with FIFA, launched the F4S, a project which targets to introduce and generate football interest among the age groups between 4-14 year-olds.
Sports Minister, Kirsty Coventry, revealed she held talks with FIFA president Gianni Infantino to have the programme launched in Zimbabwe.
Grobbelaar praised Coventry for playing a pivotal role in having the programme launched in the country.
“This programme comes from, initially I am going to say it comes from the Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation Minister, Honourable Kirsty Coventry, without her intervention into the ZIFA demise in the past, this programme would never get here,” said Grobbelaar.
“The Normalisation Committee has been brought in and it is a very difficult job.
“Since around the time of the past two presidents of ZIFA, there have been a lot of discrepancies and the NC has now got those discrepancies away and the debts are cleared.
“I understand 100 percent of what their task is and it is not a thankless task because initially there are so many debts and I know they have now put out structures in place and without them this programme will never have been launched.
“I would like to thank each and every single one of them in the NC because they are on a path to resurrect what we once had as Zimbabwe, which has been neglected, and without these kinds of programmes we can never get the future stars for our country.
“We have got it now in full circle in Zimbabwe, with that I am going to tell you that Zimbabwe is a sleeping giant of African football.”