Online Reporter
AS the local Premier Soccer League clubs re-group in their various camps to prepare for the 2025 season, excitement and anxiety is brewing among the game’s stakeholders and even neutrals.
The refreshing excitement has been brought about by the arrival of big-spending newboys Scottland Football Club.
Although they might not be the first Premiership new kids on the block to spend big, there is a greater element of swag and a different approach that Scottland are bringing into Zimbabwean football.
They arrive in the PSL as the first club in the history of the elite league to own their own ambulance, a key asset in the welfare of athletes, in this case players’ welfare.
The biggest carrot they have dangled for players is their ability to pay hefty salaries and to ensure that their biggest assets, the players and their coach, are well-motivated.
Often-times there has been talk in Zimbabwean football circles that the game needs to be commercialised.
However, we have noted with concern that the so-called commercialisation of domestic football has largely been lip-service.
But when you get a club arriving on the stage and paying Khama Billiat well enough for the former Mamelodi Sundowns and Kaizer Chiefs talisman to feel comfortable, then that can only up the standards of the game in the country.
In the last two seasons, we have seen how businessman Simba Ndoro has transformed the face of football in Mashonaland Central province and in the mining town of Shamva in particular.
Ndoro’s investment in Simba Bhora, which included refurbishment of Wadzanai stadium in Shamva, helped bring the Premiership to the mining town, to the benefit of surrounding areas like Madziwa and Murehwa.
Similarly, Scottland are not only restricting themselves to ensuring their players who include Ronald Pfumbidzai, Lynoth Chikuhwa, Walter Musona and Lincoln Zvasiya, will be looked after well.
Scottland owner Pedzai “Scott’’ Sakupwanya has told this publication a number of times that he wants his football project to also help build communities in Mabvuku and Tafara, which is the constituency that he represents in Parliament.
The businessman and legislator has embarked on an audacious project to turn a ground in his township Mabvuku into a world class stadium.
It would be easy for the narrow-eyed to dismiss Scottland and Simba Bhora as either flamboyant or mere big spenders.
The wider-eyed would however, welcome anyone investing hugely into local football. The arrival of such teams like Scottland and Simba Bhora means the local Premiership will be able to retain some of its best players.
Maybe, now that we have actors in the elite league like Simba Bhora and Scottland, we could in the 2025 season and beyond see prolific strikers who can break the late Norman Maroto’s record of 22 goals.
The late Maroto, who featured for Dynamos, Buymore and Gunners, achieved the 22-goal feat in 2010 when leading the line for the now defunct Gunners.
Since then, local football has struggled to retain top players including strikers as anyone who showed glimpses of talent was snapped up by clubs in South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique and Tanzania.
Thus, we believe that the more big-spending clubs we have in our Premiership, the healthier our football will become.
The development will no doubt push up the standards and that is why we applaud the emergence of such clubs at any given time.
In the era of Blackpool, competition became stiffer in the PSL and that Dynamos needed a superior goal difference to pip them for the 1995 title, spoke volumes of the impact that the team they called Ndochi had on the league.
AmaZulu also positively impacted on the competitiveness of the national game as did FC Platinum who would go on to become the first team from outside Harare and Bulawayo to win the league title in more than five decades.
That FC Platinum became a dominant force for four seasons and knocking Dynamos, Highlanders and CAPS United off the perch, is stuff that can make Zimbabwean football healthier.
While Dynamos, Highlanders and CAPS United remain the traditional giants, they will be the first to acknowledge that their dominance, just like Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates in South Africa, has now been confined more to the annals of history.
In South Africa, Mamelodi Sundowns arrived with a culture of free-spending to get the best talent and the results have been there for all to see.
We believe that the clubs with fatter cheque books, often called moneybags in our football, should in fact, be encouraged to retain their investment in the game and even set up commercial structures for sustainability.
With world football governing body FIFA introducing Club Licensing regulations aimed at enhancing governance of the sport in an environment that is increasingly becoming commercial, our PSL needs to ride on the emergence of more moneybags.
There is also a need for more company-owned teams to help the PSL up the ante.
Money traditionally follows where there is money and for Zimbabwean football to evolve into the megabucks industry that we all yearn for; it must start with the PSL clubs being able to pay well and attract the best talent from within and outside the country’s borders.
If at the start of every season there is a club in the mould of Scottland, Simba Bhora, FC Platinum, Ngezi Platinum and GreenFuel, who have financial stability, the PSL will rank among the top leagues in Africa.
And that will result in the national teams having a healthy balance of local and foreign-based talent that is able to compete with the best.
South Africa’s Bafana Bafana are already benefitting from the fact that their top clubs have invested heavily in players and thus can draw their squad from their domestic league.
We hope and pray there will be more money bags in the PSL to stimulate more competition and more crowds at local games.
