Home Sports Warriors qualify for AFCON, Bunjira maintains stance on Warriors traveling plan

Warriors qualify for AFCON, Bunjira maintains stance on Warriors traveling plan

by Kudakwashe Vhenge

By Trevor Makonyonga 

A Perfect Chikwende solitary strike secured a place for Zimbabwe at the Africa Cup of Nations, AFCON, to be held in Cameroon in 2022.

The Warriors went into the match needing nothing short of victory to claim a place at the tournament despite also mathematically requiring Algeria to gain a point to seal their fate.

Algeria managed to live up the Warriors’ expectations as they drew 3-3 with a defiant Zambia who fought until the last minute.

The Warriors victory became the first win for current coach, Zdravko Logarusic and subsequently meant that Loga becomes the first foreign coach to take Zimbabwe to the continental football fiesta.

The trip to Botswana was however marred by a lot of controversies as former Warriors player and current pundit Alois “Gaza” Bunjira wrote an article about the would-be route which the Warriors should have taken. 

ZIFA came guns blazing after Bunjira with a heavy worded letter which sort to disqualify the former warrior.

ZIFA said, “The Zimbabwe Football Association wishes to respond to unfortunate, uninformed and totally reckless statements attributed to Alois Bunjira in today’s edition of The Herald. While Bunjira has every right to air his opinion, what we found deeply saddening and awkward is his deliberate decision to peddle falsehoods on issues that could have been easily verified. Further, the story only served to expose Bunjira’s ignorance of CAF rules with respect to travelling arrangements of national teams.

“Again, this is false because ZIFA never considered to use the road. ZIFA would want the nation to know that the arrangement of the national team travel was done on time and it was always clear the team would fly. We are not sure of how Bunjira thinks it is convenient to drive from Bulawayo to Francistown when its public knowledge that physical borders are closed.

“Further, we are all aware of delays that normally characterize the movement of traffic at border posts. In equal measure, ZIFA has written instructions from the Sports Recreation Commission (SRC) prohibiting national teams from travelling by road during the pandemic.”

Bustop TV spoke to Bunjira who said that this attack is unwarranted for as he maintains that what he said was the original plan.

“They take things personally. I spoke in general because I had heard of their plan. They changed because they must have had further discussions but that was the original plan. What I wrote is exactly what we discussed in radio.”

The way ZIFA has descended on Bunjira exposes a war that might be ensuing behind closed doors with rumors already swelling that Bunjira wants to run for a ZIFA post in the next election. 

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