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NewsDay

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Editorial Comment: Discord at Dynamos mirrors national ills

Opinion & Analysis
WITH about a month-and-a-half to go before the start of the 2019 Castle Lager Premier Soccer League season, there is a lot of excitement generated from the activities in the transfer market, where clubs are jostling to put together strong squads.

Editorial Comment

WITH about a month-and-a-half to go before the start of the 2019 Castle Lager Premier Soccer League season, there is a lot of excitement generated from the activities in the transfer market, where clubs are jostling to put together strong squads.

The story of the transfer window so far has been that of Dynamos getting duped by Valentine Kadonzvo, who conned the club into giving him a clearance on the pretext that he was moving abroad to further his education, only for him to turn up at Chicken Inn in Bulawayo.

This rather pathetic story has a lot of lessons that can be drawn from it, especially regarding the lack of professionalism among local teams.

How does a club like Dynamos fail to understand the basics of conducting due diligence checks before clearing a player?

If a team is clearing a player, they address the letter directly to the club that the player will be joining. They do not write an open cheque like what Dynamos did, addressing Kadonzvo’s clearance letter ‘to whom it may concern’.

Even if Kadonzvo was, indeed, going abroad for educational purposes, why would he have needed Dynamos to issue him with a clearance letter?

This episode also shows that Dynamos do not understand the importance of a contract. Players should not walk out of their contracts at will — just like that.

What is happening in football the world over is that when players move, clubs insert clauses such that they benefit if the same player were to be sold to bigger leagues in Europe, for example.

The Kadonzvo issue just goes to show how local clubs are failing to embrace professionalism.

If Dynamos had a chief executive officer, who was hands on and has experience in running football, they would not have been such easy prey.

Clubs need to employ professionals, so that the running of clubs improves, which sets them well in terms of attracting sponsorship.

Sponsors will not trust an institution that does not understand the basics of contracts of employment.

This idea of clubs just hand-picking certain individuals for certain positions must stop if the local league is to grow and compete with the other top leagues in Africa.

Dynamos are sitting on another time bomb as they are refusing to pay Cameroonian Christian Epoupa Ntouba, insisting that they gave him all his dues.

Whether Dynamos did pay the player is not the issue. The issue is that if Dynamos had a functioning office run by professionals experienced in human resources, marketing and finance, they would not be having such problems.

Zifa should force all clubs, particularly those that are in the topflight, to employ professionals. That is the only way local football can reach its full potential and attract proper funding.