It seems the Castle lager premier league trophy has made Zvishavane its permanent home since 2017, since then, it has not known anywhere else except for the FC Platinum display cabinet.The Mimosa sponsored 2019 football champions have won the league title thrice in a row, twice in 2017 and 2018 under Norman Mapeza, now Chippa United coach in South Africa. Lizwe Sweswe made it three in a trot after he took over from Mapeza in 2019. ZiMining Sport ((ZS) spoke to Chido Chizondo (CC), the club’s spokesperson who attributed their success to hard work, commitment and focus.The excerpts of the interview follow below.
ZS: What does winning three league championships on the trot mean for the club and its stakeholders?
CC: It speaks volumes of the amount of work that a team has to put in to getting to the top. The entire FC Platinum stakeholders are all proud to have made history especially being the new boys in football.
This achievement did not happen overnight, it was a combination ofprocesses and systems coming into place from as early as 2011. The team is in the right direction of attaining its vision, as such, all the key stakeholders need to be proud of the achievements and must aim to continue to work as a team to make the FC Platinum brand even bigger and better
ZS:Â It is no easy achievement to win the league championship, and more so three times on the run, what has been the recipe for success?
CC: Hard work, commitment and focus. There is no substitute for hard work. Talent without hard work comes to nothing, all key stakeholders have been working hard, taking advantage of opportunities, turning weaknesses into strengths, while consolidating our key strength. FC Platinum has been striving to be a professional outfit and this hunger for professionalism can also be attributed to these successes, but this is a process as we still feel we are not yet there.
ZS: The club has raised the bar high now, what efforts are you doing tomaintain the momentum to retain the championship?
CC: FC Platinum is at the top and we need to do so much to move so little. We are also cognizant of the pressures that come with being at the top and trying to stay on top, as such, we need to simply improve ourselves, we need renewed hunger, we need to emulate the best who took four league titles in a row.
We naturally need to bolster our squad for a fresh challenge, new players bring new zeal, enthusiasm and impetus to refuel the team and eliminate complacency associated with success.
