FORMER Warriors and Highlanders midfielder Johannes Ngodzo has hailed Bosso for signing midfielder Marvin Sibanda, who is the club’s first signing for the 2024 Castle Lager Premier Soccer league season.
Ngodzo coached Sibanda (25) at Bantu Rovers which featured in the Zifa Bulawayo Province junior and Zifa Southern Division One leagues before the player moved to the United States on a football scholarship in 2016.
The former stylish Highlanders’ midfielder, whose career was curtailed by a knee injury, heaped praise on Sibanda.
“He (Sibanda) is one player who has a passion for football. To be honest, I coached him more than five years ago and he has been in America and I don’t know what that might have done to him, but he is a brilliant player. Highlanders got someone good in Marvin, a good midfielder, a left-footer like me, but a bit slow. He has got the vision. He must just keep his head up and get used to the environment because the crowd at BF is intimidating. But if he is still what he was back then when I coached him, he is one boy who has got a lot of talent. When he came down to Bulawayo from Victoria Falls, I immediately saw a great player,” Ngodzo said.
Sibanda penned a three-year contract with Highlanders last Friday and his last club was Little Rock Rangers, which is based in Arkansas in the US.
Little Rock Rangers features in the USL League Two, a national semi-professional league in the fourth tier.
He played for that league alongside fellow countryman Nyasha Dube, who hails from Hwange and also plays in the centre.
Sibanda left for the US in 2016 with goalkeeper Nkosiphile Dube on a scholarship programme involving Bantu Rovers owner Methembe Ndlovu, the last coach to win the local league title with Highlanders in 2006.
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His first port of call was at Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut State, having left the country when he was doing his Advanced Level at Northlea High School.
Dube and Sibanda joined Percival Sibanda and Mthabisi Tshuma, who were already studying in the US back them. Bulawayo giants’ out-of-contract striker Ray Lunga is one of the beneficiaries of that programme.
Highlanders lost defender Mbongeni Ndlovu and Brighton Manhire to FC Platinum and are still negotiating with other players whose contracts expired on December 31.
Incoming coach, Zambian Kelvin Kaindu is in the country and awaits his work permit.
