Terrence Mawawa

The Zimbabwe Under-17 coach Tafadzwa Mashiri has come under fire for reportedly snubbing United Kingdom-based players who were willing to take part in the COSAFA Under-17 tournament.

According to The Herald, Philip Zulu who is the head coach at an academy in Leeds approached Mashiri and his backroom staff, and both parties agreed that the UK contingent would travel to Zimbabwe for camp.

However, Zulu’s efforts to facilitate the movement were frustrated as the Young Warriors coach went on to select only locally-based players for the squad that travelled to Mauritius.

The newspaper indicated that Mashiri and other junior national team coaches connived to select only players from local academies in return for “favours” at the expense of national football development.

In an interview, Zulu warned that such developments would result in players snubbing their home countries to stay in Europe.

“At least France has the guts to admit and say, ‘We need them as part of our highest ambitions’, surely our situation back home is so embarrassing and why don’t we learn,” Zulu said.

“We engaged them for almost two weeks, and they (Under-17 coaches) gave us the guarantee that our boys would be invited to join the camp.

“We asked them to put everything in writing (and) they didn’t do so in time, only to find the names of the selected squad today (yesterday) when we were busy preparing.

“This is very unfair, biased and unilateral.”