Consider evening PSL matches

I APPEAL to football authorities in Zimbabwe to consider night football on some of our mid-week matches so that our clubs won’t find some problems to adjust to it when they face other rival African football teams while playing away from home.

We cannot be surprised why our football clubs perform dismally when playing giants such as Al Ahly, Zamalek of Egypt, Esperance and Etoile, sportive Du Sahel of Tunisia, Raja Casablanca of Morocco and other teams from Algeria, Nigeria and Senegal because teams from these countries prefer to play their matches at night to avoid things like the hot weather and crowd trouble at matches.

We can take some lessons from the South African Premier league where most of their mid-week league games are being played in the evenings. There is no time difference between Zimbabwe and South Africa but to my big surprise I don’t know why we are not also doing the same thing when we fully know that there is a difference in time between Southern Africa and North Africa.

These are some of the reasons why West African teams have been dominating us for a very long time. For example Chicken Inn lost a game to Sundowns of South Africa after they panicked when playing their high profile game at night. Initially the game was supposed to be played in the afternoon but since Sundowns were trailing by a goal to nil from the first match, they decided to use all dirty tricks including shifting their game to the evening.

In 1998 Dynamos lost the champion’s final to ASEC of Ivory Coast in a match the Zimbabweans team could simply have won. Our national team the Warriors have been beaten every time they play most of these teams from the North and West of Africa. I therefore appeal to Zimbabwe Premier League and Zifa to introduce evening matches so that our players can get used to playing at night.

We can not continue to have mid-week games in the afternoon because most of them have a low turnout since most supporters will be at work.

Eddious Masundire shumba and Kingstone Kwembeya,

Bulawayo.