Copa Coca Cola reduce age limit

PREPARATIONS for this year’s edition of the Copa Coca-Cola are already underway with organisers of the tournament yesterday announcing a shift in age group in the boys category from Under-16 to Under15 in their bid to meet international standards.

This year’s launch is set for May 24 at Rujeko High School in Mashonaland Central who are the defending champions, following their triumph last year in Gwanda.

The girls competition remains the Under-17.

Speaking on the sidelines of a media workshop by tournament organisers, National Association of Secondary Heads, head-in-charge of football Albert Mucheka said the move is in line with the FIFA recognised age-groups.

“The boys change actually is because we want to align our age group with FIFA standards because they have the Under-15, Under-17 and Under-20 for juniors. So we did that in line with the FIFA requirements.

“We also felt it was more developmental. It will be early enough to develop our players fully to an extent that even at Under-20 they can join Division One.

“In fact we used to have an Under15 tournament before . . . we had it for about a year or two. Now we have Coca-Cola sponsoring the Under15. The girls (competition) has not changed since they compete at the Cossasa,” said Mucheka.

The launch will be followed by the zonal competition on May 26 and the winners will proceed to the district tournaments on June 9.

The provincial finals will be on July 7 and they will culminate into the national finals to be hosted by Mashonaland Central on July 21 and 22.

Chipindura High School will host the boys while Hermann Gmeiner hosts girls.

Both schools automatically qualify for the tournament on the basis of being hosts.

Yesterday’s workshop saw CocaCola market activations manager, Vee Chibanda, who was one of the presenters, taking the participants through the background and evolution of the tournament.