Dear Editor
The article in the Herald Sports news of the 15th of October, carries serious distortions and outright lies accorded to Mr Marshall Gore as someone ‘hugely and largely ‘ responsible for the scouting of Darikwa, Mudimu, Muskwe and other professional footballers with Zimbabwean roots, to represent their country in international tournaments.
Firstly, Mr Gore is well known for social football across the width and breadth of UK where his project under the Team Zimbabwe UK flagship only operates during summertime and is highly staffed with retired footballers of mature advanced age groups that engage in fun related activities.
We neither condemn this thrill nor dilute their enthusiasm in these social programs that they undertake, but to overtly insinuate that such gatherings gave Mr Gore some ‘midas touch’ of proscribing and projecting a ‘vision ‘ for recruiting young talents from Zimbabwean backgrounds to the current status quo where we have many such athletes who are willing to represent their country- is mischievous, reckless and extremely opportunistic in stealing our creativity and intelligence that pervades all seams of the planning processes that we undertook more than ten years ago when I engaged the then Technical Director (Mr Nelson Matongorera), to possibly embark on this tough task.
The agenda to start coaching, scouting and recruiting young talented Zimbabwean players gathered momentum in 2009 when I was appointed to work under the TD and this undertaking had no financial support or any treasury allocation from the finance ministry in Zimbabwe.
I scouted Tendayi Darikwa when he was 16 and straight away linked him with the TD who then initiated moves for Tendayi to come and play for the national teams but the former CEO Henrietta Rushwaya demanded money and the whole thing collapsed. I scouted Tendayi in 2009 in Garforth when he played for Chesterfield FC against Garforth Town FC which was under the Brazilian Soccer Schools where my son was training as an U10.
Secondly, I was the first African scout at Leeds United in 2006 and this opened many opportunities for young players to get invited for trials and slowly, most parents soon realised the importance of representing their country if such an opportunity prevailed.
The most serious attempt was pursued by former U23 Coach Callisto Pasuwa who asked me through the then acting TD Takaendesa Jongwe to compile a full list of young players in Europe who could be interested in playing against Morocco in Rabat.
Munyaradzi Mbanje, Macaulay Bonne and David Moyo all agreed.
Charlie White and Ndaba Nyathi also playing a major part as they were heavily involved in the grassroots development programs that aimed to improve young players so that at some point in their professional career they can represent Zimbabwe national teams.
It seems Mr Gore has this sordid deliberate attempt to down play, dilute and erase our ingenuity in this complex trajectory of junior football development that is not part of his domain, but an alter-ego voyeuristic pursuit and flight of frenzy.
Thirdly, Mr Gore has never been associated with any junior players at any stage and as such, we find his media pronouncements as simply false, damaging on his ‘integrity’ and an extreme fabrication of events that he is highly ignorant of.
Fourthly, when I approached Zifa through a German based instructor to enrol local coaches for further training and coaching under UEFA B licence- Mr Gore’s name appeared in our communique much to our suprise, as we are well aware that he doesn’t represent the work we do at grassroots level in UK and Europe but, he is mostly involved in a social boozer football program that ended travelling to Zimbabwe as some ‘talented young players from UK’.
Lastly, we are not going to allow Mr Gore to reap where he didn’t sow by grabbing our creativity and intelligence, he needs to bring a robust and comprehensive document that is far detailed and inspiring, rather than hoodwink people with lies and distortions.Concerned Scout
