NEWLY elected Zifa president Nqobile Magwizi has put the Warriors preparations for the forthcoming Africa Cup of Nations and refurbishing of the National Sports Stadium on his priority list.
Magwizi was elected president of Zifa yesterday.
He will be deputised by Kenny Ndebele and Loveness Wadzanai Mukura
Magwizi polled 61 of the 77 votes with Philemon Machana, his closest challenger garnering just 6.
Twine Phine got four votes while Makwinji Soma Phiri failed to get any with Marshall Gore getting just one.
The Zifa election was preceeded by a dramatic withdrawal by one of the candidates after Martin Kweza chose not to contest just hours before the plebiscite.
Kweza was expected to give Magwizi a tough challenge and his withdrawal paved the way for Magwizi.
Wicknell Chivayo had also promised to buy brand new cars for all the voting Zifa councilors if Magwizi had won the election.
He also promised to inject $10 million into the association as long as it was under Magwizi's watch.
The executive board is 11 board members and yesterday nine members were elected.
They will be joined by the Premier Soccer League chairman as well as the women's top-flight league leader.
Speaking to the media immediately after the election, Magwizi said the election marks a new beginning for Zimbabwean football.
"I believe we are more than 20 years behind in terms of where we should be when we speak about football. There is a lot of work that needs to be done. Firstly we need to fix our institution," Magwizi said.
"There is a lot of work we need to do to ensure we come up with best practices of how to make sure that Zifa is an efficient institution that will deliver so that it measures up to the bat there is in the world."
He highlited the need to bring back investor confidence into the game.
"We need to make sure that we rebuild faith and have partners. They are very critical in the growth of football in Zimbabwe," he said.
Critically, Magwizi spoke of the need to prepare the Warriors well for the upcoming Africa Cup of Nations finals to be held in Morocco this December.
"We have Afcon coming up, a very important assignment. That's our primary focus because if we don't do well there, therefore it means we are failing," added Magwizi.
"We have a commitment to make sure that we do well in Afcon because that's our first litmus test. Of course there are various other aspects that we need to attend to but that one is a national platform where we could be seen how well we are performing so we are very committed to hit the ground running to ensure that we prepare our Warriors well for Afcon."
His desire is to have football back in the country soon.
"We are critically interested in making sure that the next match is played in Zimbabwe, it's very important because it's embarrassing to be playing matches outside the country," he said.
One of the losing candidates, Machana pledged to support Magwizi after conceding defeat.
"It is important to accept that in football we compete and results will follow that process. I am glad to have been a participant, it was important for our football democracy to sweat the eventual winners so they come in knowing what stakeholders expect. I have lost the election but we needed to contest the winner and with this landslide he has earned the legitimacy. Let’s all support the new president and his team as football loving stakeholders. We should never at any time try to taint this process and, or its outcome as such creates the disunity in football and lack of progress. The winners have won because they prevailed. Everyone who loves football must support them so they succeed," he said.
Magwizi said that he would work hard to make sure that the National Sports Stadium is ready to host the Warriors' World Cup qualifier against Benin in March.