Team Zim gears for Oslo WC
THE Young Achievement Sports for Development, who select and run Team Zimbabwe for the annual Homeless World Cup, have indicated that they will go national in picking their side that will represent the country at this year’s tournament in Oslo, Norway.
This year’s Homeless World Cup is scheduled to run from August 29 to September 5 in Oslo and Zimbabwe will once again be sending a team to this tournament which is designed for the homeless people worldwide.
Last year’s Homeless World Cup tournament was held from July 10 to 16 in Glasgow, Scotland, where Zimbabwe finished 26th overall out of 44 countries.
At Glasgow, Team Zimbabwe came 26th overall after losing 8-5 to Wales in the Men’s Shield final after having scored an impressive 72 goals during the weeklong tournament.
And now Team Zimbabwe are already preparing to have another dance with the Homeless World Cup tournament in Oslo this year with Petros Chatiza, one of the directors of the Young Achievement Sports Development, a Harare-based non-profit making organisation that selects and runs the team for this tournament, telling The Herald yesterday that they have decided to spread their wings.
“In the past years, our selection of Team Zimbabwe for the Homeless World Cup was restricted to players from Harare only, but we have now decided to go national in our selection process and we will be holding a day-long tournament at the beginning of May where teams from all over Zimbabwe will converge at one venue where we will then pick the players for the Oslo event,” Chatiza said.
At last year’s tournament in Glasgow, the Zimbabwean team included a young man named Blessing Makirimira, who was born deaf.
His teammates welcomed him with open arms, using their phones and learning sign language in order to communicate.
“Many people didn’t actually realise that we had a deaf player in our team because of the unity,” said Chatiza.
Makirimira himself explained why attending the tournament was important to him: “I am playing for the inclusion of all disabled people.”