"Musona Wanted To Quit Warriors In 2019"
Zimbabwe national teams General Manager Wellington Mpandare said former Warriors captain Knowledge Musona initially wanted to retire from international football soon after the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) finals before he eventually quit the national team in 2022.
Mpandare told Soccer24 that during the AFCON finals held in Cameroon in early 2022, Musona revealed that he intended to retire from international football after the tournament to concentrate more on club football.
Mpandare believes Musona decided to quit the Warriors because of “what he went through as the captain of the national team.” Said Mpandare:
During the last AFCON finals in Cameroon, he told me that he was going to retire from international football after the tournament. We talked about it with Norman Mapeza, who was the coach then.
He (Musona) simply told us that he wanted to concentrate more on club football, having served well in the national team and we just wished him well.
He told us that it was the right time to hand over the responsibility to other upcoming players but realistically, the frustrations were coming from what he went through as the captain of the national team.
If you look at what happened at the 2019 Afcon finals in Egypt, it was draining for him and everyone who was involved in the negotiations over appearance fees and how the tournament ended.
He actually wanted to leave after the 2019 finals but he then decided to stay on. But after the 2021 tournament, he said “enough is enough” and quit.
Remember, at one time before that tournament (AFCON 2021), the players were not focused because they thought Zimbabwe was not going to be allowed to participate since FIFA had suspended the Felton Kamambo-led ZIFA executive.
The suspended Kamambo-led administration didn’t want the team to be allowed to participate and there was a lot of talk of them (the Kamambo-led board) pushing for FIFA and CAF to boot us out of the tournament.
So, that on its own was a distraction and the captain (Musona) felt he didn’t want to have all those problems and decided to walk away.
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