Myengwa ‘launches’ new association
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MBABANE – A new football association in the country has been registered. This is Football Federation of Eswatini (FFE), which according to one of its founders, Myengwa ‘Goje’ Sibandze, its core objective are to professionalise local football to benefit all stakeholders not to be a drain to teams’ directors. ‘Goje’ was quick to highlight that FFE was not established to compete with Eswatini Football Association (EFA) as some people would think. He revealed that the new federation would have its own league and teams. “This federation will run football as a business or professional football whereby our members would be required to meet certain requirements before affiliating with FFE,” Sibandze said.
He said the first requirement was that the club must be a company with its directors and shareholders registered. He said the company could register as a sole director or more directors, as that would not be a challenge. “The second requirement is that a club should own a sports ground, as our objective is to run both man and women football professionally in the country and we want these teams to be able to generate income for themselves,” he said.
He also said they wanted the teams to provide job opportunities to the people of the community they would be based at. He revealed that their plan was to have the players and the background staff to be employed fulltime by the clubs. “For the viability of the football business, the clubs will be investing in football and run it professionally. Our aim is to have one team from an area to create a strong fan base to benefit the club as it will play all its home games at the pitch that will be a requirement,” he said.
‘Goje’ went on to explain that the core business of the clubs was the fan base and they had not to compete for supporters and that was the reason they wanted to have one club from a community. He said they wanted the people of that community to identify themselves as the club. He further said that they were targeting 16 clubs to join the new federation and they encouraged people not to target exciting clubs as they were affiliated to EFA and the Premier League of Eswatini (PLE). He revealed the other founding members of the FFE as Fritz Seilbea, Charlie Jele, Themba Simelane and Petros Mnisi.