LOCAL football referees will next year undergo Video Assistant Referee (VAR) training, Zifa Normalisation Committee chairperson Lincoln Mutasa has said.
Mutasa revealed this at the weekend while commissioning courses for referees and match commissioners in Harare.
“What have we done to try and make that enabling environment for you? You are the first port of call and we said let’s get the referees in order because we realise what a pivotal role you play. Right now you will hear, I think in a week’s time or two, we will be having the schools’ championships," he told the match officials.
"There will be some training going on there but one of the conditions that we gave Caf is that we have VAR training in Zimbabwe for our referees because we understand it is actually coming to South Africa. So they agreed that next year, they will bring that VAR vehicle here to train our referees. We are doing this because we don’t want you to be left behind when we go to the 2026 World Cup,” Mutasa said.
He urged local referees to strive for recognition so that they are part of regional and international competitions.
“I believe as we start this long journey towards the 2026 World Cup, please take it upon yourselves that you want to be one of them who will be officiating. I think from our part as normalisation committee, our job is to create an enabling environment for the referees and the players to prosper and all stakeholders to do well,” he said.
He added: “When I say ‘create an enabling environment’ we are saying a conducive environment whereby success breeds success and likewise failure also brings failure. If you find we are reading about chaos in our games and you were officiating personnel, that means there is something that is not right. Either you are not fit enough or you don’t understand the laws of the game or you are biased towards somebody because you are the critical person in any game.”
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