Eight Zimbabwean soccer players have gone missing in London following a controversial trip to the United Kingdom to play a match, a newspaper reported in Harare on Saturday.
Two soccer officials have also disappeared, the state-controlled Herald reported.
The ten men — from top teams Caps United and Highlanders Football Club — were granted visas to travel to the UK for a match last weekend, but were supposed to return to Zimbabwe this week with the rest of their team.
However, they have disappeared in what appears to be ”one of the biggest crises to hit the country’s battered national sporting discipline”, the newspaper said.
The revelation follows a week of unconfirmed reports and speculation that the players and officials had clandestinely joined hundreds of thousands of other Zimbabweans living and working in the former colonial power.
”It is quite a big blow for us as a club to lose such a huge number of players at once, but we have to quickly sit down and map the way forward,” the team manager of Caps United, Farai Jere was quoted as saying.
”It is a pity that these players might have decided to destroy their careers by pursuing a new life in England,” he said.
At least two of the players checked in their luggage at Heathrow International airport but then disappeared into the crowds and did not board their plane home, the Herald said. Others slipped away from camp, the report said.
Local newspapers reported this week that the match between the two Zimbabwean club sides had not been sanctioned by the English Football Association. The association is going to report the incident to Fifa, soccer’s world governing body, the newspaper said.
The match, initially billed as an international friendly, turned out to be a social played between the two sides at a rugby stadium in the northern city of Bradford. It was reported to have been organised by a British-based entertainment company run by Zimbabweans.
In an editorial on Saturday, the Herald lashed out at Zimbabwe’s own soccer governing body — the Zimbabwe Football Association (Zifa). It accused the body of committing an embarrassing diplomatic gaffe.
”Imagine the bad blood now between Zifa and the British Embassy who will rightly feel that they were duped by this association that these people were going on a real football trip?”
The paper also predicted that the incident ”could have a terrible effect on genuine football stars trying to get contracts with English teams”.
More than a quarter of the country’s approximately 12-million people are believed to be living and working outside Zimbabwe in places like South Africa and the United Kingdom. – Sapa-DPA