Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation Minister Kirsty Coventry has said authorities are working to ensure that the Warriors will play their matches in the upcoming World Cup qualifiers at home.
This comes after FIFA lifted its suspension of the Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA), a development that allows Zimbabwe’s national football teams to compete in international tournaments.
Responding to questions during a Press conference where FIFA confirmed the lifting of the ZIFA suspension and unveiled the normalisation committee, Coventry said:
We have had good open conversations with FIFA. We will continue having conversations (about the National Sports Stadium).
The guarantees of what has been happening which has not been made public will go to FIFA through the SRC [Sports and Recreation Commission] and we remain fully committed to doing that seeing and ensuring that we are playing our games at home.
There has been ongoing work. The electronic ticketing system is now in the country waiting to be installed.
Water reticulation is in process and the feasibility study for the entire area, not just the NSS, but the grounds around it are being undertaken at the moment. It should be wrapped up in the next two to three weeks.
This has also been explained to FIFA when they visited and they also went and visited the National Sports Stadium of which they were under the impression that is crumbling to the ground, but they that it was not the case.
The feasibility study is being undertaken by a South African legitimate company that built and renovated soccer stadiums for the 2010 World Cup.
And in the next three weeks, we will have more of an update on for you on where that feasibility study will see us.
All of Zimbabwe’s stadiums were banned from hosting international matches three years ago after they failed to meet the minimum standards required by CAF and FIFA.
The Warriors enter the FIFA World Cup 2026 African Qualifiers draw, which will be conducted on Thursday evening in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
Zimbabwe are in Pot 4 of the 54-team draw along with Mozambique, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Togo, Tanzania, Central African Republic, Malawi and Libya.
There are six pots for the draw.
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