Champions League champions, Esperance of Tunisia later this month.
The red and yellow-clad Esperance are nicknamed “Blood and Gold”, but Chinyama, instrumental in all of Dembare’s crucial wins thus far in the season, wants to draw the former as he guns for the latter in the two-legged meet.
No Dynamos player has scored against the crack Tunisian outfit since 1999, but Chinyama is dreaming of breaking that jinx in the next few weeks.
The two sides have set a date for a two-legged CAF Champions League duel that begins later this month. Victory will spur one of the sides to the money-spinning mini-league phase of the competition and Chinyama wants to be the man who takes Dembare there.
“I am confident that I will score against them. We are playing well as a team and I believe we have a chance against them this time round,” said Chinyama.
The new recruit has become the talisman for the Harare giants, having banged in six goals in three competitive games since joining during the off-season.
He scored a hat-trick when the defending champions gave new boys Hardbody a baptism of fire that ended in a 3-0 drubbing in the season-opener two weeks ago, a week after he had powered the Glamour Boys to a 2-2 draw against Mozambique’s Liga Muculmana de Maputo in the first leg of the Champions league fortnight ago.
He then struck the final nail in the Maculmana coffin Sunday, when his solitary goal provoked a daggers-drawn affair with the defending champions.
On the other hand, Esperance progressed after a 4-2 aggregate win over Gambian champions, Brikama United.
In the 1999 mini-league, Dynamos lost 0-1 in Tunisia 0-2 in the reverse fixture at Rufaro stadium. Two years ago, Dynamos lost by an identical 1-0 score line home and away at the same stage of the same competition.
Dynamos are the only surviving Zimbabwean team in the African sojourn, following the departure of FC Platinum, who fell 2-5 on aggregate to Sudan’s El Merreik in the Champions League, while Hwange drew 2-2 with Merreik’s countrymen, Al Amal to bow out of the Confederations Cup on the away goals rule, having drawn 2-2 at home in the first leg.
Post published in: Football