WE HAVE FAILED! Kirsty Coventry knows football fans hate her, says no backing down on fixing messy ZIFA affairs

By Leopold Munhende | Chief Correspondent

SPORTS Minister Kirsty Coventry knows she is local football’s most hated individual at the present moment.

She oversaw the banning of Zimbabwe from international football by world governing body FIFA and its continental affiliate CAF in February last year.

Coventry who boasts of seven Olympic medals out of Zimbabwe’s eight revealed this as she made a long-awaited public appearance on a football related platform Monday.

She was a guest at broadcaster ZTN Prime’s indaba on the local game themed ‘It’s time to make Zimbabwean football exciting again.’

In accepting the bad state of Zimbabwean football, Coventry blamed football stakeholders for the mess caused by what she said was greed and corruption.

She vowed to clean local football of those stains with assistance of similarly disliked Sports and Recreation Commission (SRC) which was responsible for the action of recalling then ZIFA President Felton Kamambo leading to FIFA’s sanction.

“I did give a message through Sithole to make sure no one has any tomatoes or eggs because this crowd does not like me too much,” said Coventry.

“We are failing you as legends, our athletes. We have taken a strong hold on it with the support of SRC and his excellency who has stood right with me and said clean it up without taking no for an answer.

“Right now, we are letting that heart (football) die because none of us are to take accountability and responsibility. Until we can hold each other accountable we are going to continue failing our incredibly talented youngsters’ dreams.

“The children who had dreams of playing in the PSL, in South Africa or for the national team are sitting and realising they have nothing. Their dream has been taken by corruption, greed and all other sorts of mishaps with no accountability.”

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Zimbabwe will miss out on the next edition of CAF’s AFCON, already missed the COSAF finals and has no teams in the Champions League or Confederations Cup.

FIFA has maintained that only bringing back Kamambo’s executive will ensure a return to their profitable fold, something government has resisted.

Coventry, much like SRC Chairperson Gerald Mlotshwa said they did not mind how long the process of cleaning local football took as they will not back down.

“We are not backing down, we are going to clean it up no matter how long it takes, and you are either with us or against us,” she added.

Coventry, however, seemed to have missed the objective of ZTN Prime’s event.

She assumed it was an official launch for Super Sport to broadcast local football matches. ZTN is the only broadcaster so far.

“This workshop is an incredible thing, the partnership with Super Sport is valuable to us and to our players who will be seen on a much larger scale and that will create huge opportunities for them.”