Give Us This Week To Come Up With An Affirmative Plan - Kirsty Coventry On The Resumption Of Football

Addressing a press conference that had delegations from the Sports and Recreation Commission, ZIFA and the Premier Soccer League, Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation Minister, Kirsty Coventry, said they were working towards the resumption of domestic football. The Herald reports. Coventry said they have submitted a proposal to ZIFA and they were waiting to hear from the latter.

Said Coventry:

As the ministry responsible for the resumption of sport, we all know that soccer has been categorised as high risk, but, we have been working with the ministry and SRC and the taskforce, which also comprise of sports doctors. We have come up with ideas, and proposals, that we have now shared with PSL, ZIFA and the Women’s Soccer League.

We are asking for them to go and look through that concept, and those ideas, to see how viable it will be, in terms of resumption, of some of our soccer (activities). It is based on the bubble-concept that we have seen in the US with the NBA and we are quite excited but, obviously, we are leaving it to the technocrats and the people in charge of soccer to tell us if it will be feasible for them and how we will all work together.

So, I am putting a bit of pressure on them to say that if they can review, with all of their expertise and come back to us, hopefully by end of next week, will be able to have another announcement with some very exciting news. I think we all know that sport, especially soccer, is the heart and soul of our country so, I hope, this will bring some much-needed mental relief for the country in the near future.’’

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That is where we are asking for everyone to be a little bit patient, because those are the things that we are all discussing right now How will it work, how will the modalities work? There are a lot of questions, in terms of the concept, what will this be like, how much will this be, is this even feasible?

We have to have those discussions and that’s why I was saying if you give us this week, to have those discussions; come up with an affirmative plan and idea that has got buy-in from everyone around the table, then we will be able to give everyone a breakdown of how we think it will work. What it would need, in terms of financial investment or financial support.

So, that is sort of the second step. Right now, we are still all in that first step. Everyone, I think, has the same goal around the table. How do we allow and bring some relief to our players? But, not just our players, how do we bring that hope and that pride back to our players and our country and how do we give our country some form of relief in terms of mental relief from Covid-19?

Countries like Zambia, Tanzania and South Africa have resumed football after suspending it for months due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

More: The Herald