Collin Matiza
FORMER Premiership defender, Timothy Chirozvani, says he wants to help identify and nurture the next generation of the country’s football stars.
He bankrolls the annual Chirozvani football tournament which was held at St Joseph’s Primary School in Chirumhanzi on Saturday.
“As you know I have this passion of developing football at grassroots level and that’s why I came up with this idea of hosting this tournament,” the UK-based Chirozvani said.
“I could have had it staged in Harare but I decided to take it to the once neglected folks in the rural area of Chirumhanzi where I grew up herding cattle.
“There is a lot of untapped talent in these rural areas and it needs to be fished out and be given the much-needed exposure from primary school level.
“Our junior national coaches also need to visit these areas… they need to cast their nets wide and I’m quite convinced they will identify a lot of gifted football players in these areas.”
The was a hive of activity at St Joseph’s Primary School where a number of primary schools from that area converged for the annual tourney.
The tournament was supposed to feature four teams – St Joseph’s, Nyautongwe, Govere and Chapwanya primary schools.
However, Chapwanya failed to participate therefore leaving only three teams to take part.
The tournament was then reduced to a round-robin competition and St Josephs beat Nyautongwe 1-0 in their first match before dispatching Govere 2-0 to top the log standings.
St Joseph’s then went on to win the tournament and retained the title they won last year during the inaugural games of the competition.
There were also individual awards with St Josephs’ Rolen Gwatiringa scooping both the Player of the Tournament and Top Goal Scorer awards with his teammate Kudzi taking the man-of the-match award while the goalkeeper’s award went to Govere’s shot stopper.
The organisers promised that the tournament will be bigger and better next year.
Wilfred Chirwa, one of the tournament’s organisers, said everything went on smoothly on Saturday.
“The tournament was well organised and all the logistics were put in place way before it started.”