Sports Reporter
YOU know you have no national football leadership when a major incident, like the one that exploded at Barbourfields on Sunday, passes without attracting their attention.
Four days into the week, which started with that orgy of violence in the City of Kings, the ZIFA normalisation committee have not issued even a sentence condemning the chaos.
Lincoln Mutasa and his team appear to have been flown, on a spacecraft, for a short holiday on Mars where they have been disconnected from the events unfolding in the constituency they claim to lead.
Or, as some now claim, which is being led, by remote control, by FIFA’s Solomon Mudege.
Probably, this explains the deafening silence from ZIFA because, from his base in Zurich, Mudege was more interested in the Euro 2024 qualifier between Switzerland and Andorra on Tuesday night.
Or, the normalisation committee do not know that they are the ultimate authority, when it comes to football in this country, and the PSL matches are played under their watch.
The match officials at Barbourfields on Sunday were chosen by the ZIFA Referees Committee and, even though their safety was under threat during the chaos, it appears it’s something that doesn’t concern Mutasa and his team.
To them, it appears, nothing happened at Barbourfields on Sunday.
In a normal football environment, one would have expected to see Mutasa at Barbourfields watching the biggest game in this country and exchanging notes with some of its stakeholders, especially those from Matabeleland.
Maybe, as they showed in flying to Australia for the Women’s World Cup final, where – like kids in a toy shop they appeared overwhelmed to get selfies with outgoing FIFA secretary-general Fatma Samoura – their priorities are elsewhere.
If the trip to the City of Kings, for the Battle of Zimbabwe, came with beautiful perks like business class air travel, five-star hotels and generous travel and subsistence allowance, maybe the ZIFA NC members would have flown to Bulawayo.
Of course, they didn’t, and that’s not only worrying, especially given the pandemonium we saw at Barbourfields, but because none of them was there to try and help in dealing with the disturbances.
That probably explains why ZIFA have been quiet, as if the big match went according to plan, and ended as expected without any missile being thrown.
All that one sees on the ZIFA platforms this week have been the advertisements for a number of vacancies which have emerged at 53 Livingstone Avenue.
They are looking for a General Secretary, a Referees Development Officer and an accountant.
If any confirmation was needed to show that these ZIFA leaders are living on a different planet, these advertisements, in a week everyone would have been hoping for them to provide the leadership after the chaos at Barbourfields, hammers home the point.