HIGHLANDERS are confident that coach Baltemar Brito will be able to successfully lead both the club and the Warriors at the same time after the Brazilian mentor was appointed the national men’s football team interim coach yesterday.
Zifa settled for Brito after going through dozens of applications for the post and he will be assisted by Dynamos coach Genesis Mangombe and Bongani Mafu.
They will lead the Warriors until June 2024 where the committee running Zifa affairs ends its tenure.
Zifa confirmed the appointments through a statement yesterday but the cat had already been out of the bag.
“The Zimbabwe Football Association (Zifa) is pleased to inform the nation that it has appointed Baltemar Brito as the head coach of the senior men's team forthwith until June 2024. He will be assisted by Bongani Mafu and Genesis Mangombe. The Normalisation Committee (NC) settled for the trio after an extensive recruitment and consultative process based on regional, continental, and global confederations' guidelines. The NC set the coaches' term of engagement to end at the same time with its mandate so that the next board will have the opportunity to recruit its own coaches” Zifa said in a statement.
Brito's first assignment, is a friendly match against Botswana where the latter will be celebrating their Independence on September 30 before assembling a squad for the 2026 Fifa World Cup qualifiers due in November.
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Zimbabwe will play Rwanda and Nigeria in November but their qualifying pool also contains South Africa, Lesotho and Benin.
“Brito and his assistants' first assignment will be the invitational match to celebrate Botswana's Independence Day on 30 September. Thereafter, they will have to begin working on creating a team to compete in the 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifiers in November,” Zifa said.
Zifa paid tribute to Highlanders and Dynamos for seconding their head coaches to the senior men's national team with the other national coaches set to be announced in due course.
“The association pleads for the nation's patience as it continues with the recruitment of remaining national teams coaches,” Zifa said.
Highlanders are locked in a tough Castle Lager Premier Soccer League title fight as they seek to end a 17-year dry spell.
They are confident that Brito can manage both challenges and still lead Bosso to the title like what Norman Mapeza did
Highlanders’ chief executive officer Ronald Moyo yesterday said the club could not stand in Brito’s way if he was interested in the Warriors’ job but remains a Highlanders employee.
“We are an open club. We have looked at some of the precedents in the country. We have seen coach Norman Mapeza coaching FC Platinum and the Warriors and he went on to win the championship in that particular year, if my memory serves me well. We also saw coach (Joey) Antipas. We thought why should we then deny the coach this opportunity, not only the coach but the nation as well?” Moyo said.
He added: “It means there is something that they (Zifa) saw in the coach which will help the national team. We are not a club that only focuses on its objectives but we look at football from a broader perspective where we are also looking at the development of the national team as well.
“If we have an employee that the national team thinks can advance that objective of developing Zimbabwean football, we are willing to work together provided that it does not disturb our objectives as a club.”