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HARARE - Zimbabwean football stakeholders feel Cuthbert Dube can only rectify the glaring oversights of his first term in office if he adopts a more hands on approach.
Dube received an overwhelming seal of approval from the Zifa electorate to land the highest post in Zimbabwean football for a second term on Saturday.
The wealthy Harare businessman convincingly beat ex-Zifa chairman Trevor David Caresle-Juul after winning the run-off 44 to 14.
The preliminary poll had seen Dube garner 34 votes followed by Carelse-Juul with 14 while Leslie Gwindi got 10 votes.
The fourth candidate, Nigel Munyati, failed to get a single vote.
After a turbulent first term at the helm, Dube has his work cut out.
His first port of call will be to re-gain the trust of Zimbabwean football fans, more so, after receiving a lot of bad publicity since the start of the year due to his involvement in the widely-publicized Salarygate scandal.
Against such odds, Dube’s faces an uphill task of arresting a soaring Zifa debt now hovering around $6 million.
The Footballers Association of Zimbabwe (Fuz) believes Dube’s re-election as Zifa president gives him the opportunity to finally resolve the Asiagate scandal.
“We hope that we are going to quickly close the chapter on the Asiagate scandal so that football can finally move forward,” Fuz secretary-general Paul Gundani said yesterday.
“We would want the FA to put in place a Dispute Resolution Chamber, which will handle team and player disputes.
“Every FA around the world under Fifa guidelines has one yet we do not have it.
“Hence we are now resorting to the Labour Court to settle player disputes, yet the Dispute Resolution Chamber should handle such issues.”
The Asiagate purge, in which Zifa banned and suspended several players for receiving sums of money from an illegal Asian betting syndicate between 2007 and 2009 to lose several invitational matches by predetermined scores, has not had the backing of the entire football fraternity.
Losing candidate Caresle-Juul perhaps aptly described the path Zifa should take on the long dragging scandal:
“History belongs to the past. The most important thing is what are we going to do, moving forward,” he said.
Prominent supporter Innocent Sairasi feels Dube should become a regular feature at stadiums during his second term.
“While it is important that he comes to football matches, we understand there are key issues he has to attend to but surely three or four times in four years is not good enough,” Sairasi said.
An insider in one of the Zimbabwe football regions said as long as Zifa is in debt they it will be difficult, if not impossible for Dube and his board, to change the fortunes of the game in the country.
“Zifa’s debt has to be dealt with because this debt is undermining the association’s capacity to invest in key programmes.
“As long as Zifa is constrained by debt it won’t be able to do basic functions.”
According to the insider, Zifa needs to convince government to fully adopt the national team.
“If we really want to compete with the best it’s also important to convince government to pay the national team coach as is the norm elsewhere on the African continent,” he said.
In the run up to the election, Dube has made promises which many hope he will deliver.
Amongst them is re-introducing the Zifa Cup, ensuring the Warriors qualify for the 2015 African Cup of Nations, the 2018 World Cup, establishing a well meaningful junior development programme and implementing strategies to help the Premier Soccer League become more professional.