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Mutasa, Musona bare souls

Sport
FORMER FC Platinum forwards Wisdom Mutasa and Walter Musona, who had broken into European football, turning out for Slovakia top-flight SK Senec, before deciding to return home without kicking a ball last week, opened up yesterday about the highs and lows of life as professional footballers.

FORMER FC Platinum forwards Wisdom Mutasa and Walter Musona, who had broken into European football, turning out for Slovakia top-flight SK Senec, before deciding to return home without kicking a ball last week, opened up yesterday about the highs and lows of life as professional footballers.

BY TAWANDA TAFIRENYIKA

The Young Warriors pair had impressed coach Eduard Pagac during trials in July, before signing one-year contracts beginning August, but they returned home in a huff last week — a move which is still a mystery.

But the players, speaking for the first time since they returned, maintained they took the best decision after weighing a number of factors. They said the new coach (Adrej Stellar) was brutally frank with them that they were not in his plans. “I think we took the best decision,” said Mutasa.

“When we went there the coach who had signed us was fired just a day after he trained us. A new coach was appointed, but he didn’t want to consider us. He even told us we were not in his plans. He said he could not tell us to go but asked us to train with the reserve team, but we later realised it was actually a sister club, not their reserve team.

He could speak English but he spoke to us in their local language, which we didn’t understand. We were the only black people there and we had to rely on one of the players to tell us what he wanted about a certain drill. After careful consideration, we decided to return home because it was clear we were not going to be given an opportunity.”

Musona said the new coach had told them they were not in his plans. He revealed that they had tried without success to tell a director at Black Aces Youth Academy, Nigel Munyati, who had facilitated the move, about the challenges they were facing, but they were frustrated because he did not answer their calls.

“The new coach told us clearly we were not in his plans. He didn’t want to consider us. We even tried to call Black Aces Youth Academy to tell them about the challenges we were facing but our calls were not being answered. I even consulted my brother Knowledge and he told me that we should take a decision that was best for us, so we decided to return home,” he said.

Black Aces Youth Academy, who hold the rights to the players, were reportedly set to write a letter to FC Platinum advising them they could let the players train with them while waiting to map up the next move.

Former Warriors midfielder Kennedy Chihuri and European agent George Venglos were also involved in facilitating the move of the players to Slovakia.