Gicumbi FC Secretary General Antoine Dukuzimana has broken his silence after his team missed out on a chance to play top flight football next season.
Dukuzimana’s side fell to a 1-1 shocking draw to Vision FC on Saturday at Mumena Stadium, a result that cost them a ticket to play in the 2023/24 Primus National League.
READ ALSO: Champions Etoile, Amagaju promoted to the topflight league
"We’re very disappointed, you can see the frustrations all around. We did our best to prepare for this match [against Vision FC] but football has always been like this and we have to accept it,” said Dukuzimana.
"I think the team lacked a bit of determination and Vision was better than us in almost all aspects. They didn’t want us to celebrate our qualification on home soil and they achieved it.”
The club was initially hit by a financial crisis which prompted players to protest against reporting to the club until their salary arrears are paid.
The situation, affected Gicumbi’s results during their first two promotion playoffs games where the team managed just one point out of a possible six, putting the club on the brink of staying in the second division although they late regrouped to win two games in a row to keep their topflight promotion hopes alive.
Dukuzimana admits that, "we didn't start this mini league well due to some certain issues about after the first two, three games we bounced back and till the last minute we had our chances to qualify but we ended up missing them out.”
READ ALSO: How Gicumbi FC kept their topflight promotion hopes alive
Prior to Saturday’s game, Gicumbi were second on the promotion playoff table with seven points, level on points with Amagaju FC who were third before their clash against Etoile de l’Est in Nyamagabe.
The team was a clear favorite to make a dream topflight comeback after four years in the second division ahead of Amagaju as they just needed to win their last game to qualify. However, a Vision FC side that had nothing to lose but just fighting for pride denied them three important points after forcing them to a 1-1 draw.
The result saw the Northern Province-based side surrender the second place to Amagaju after the latter beat Etoile 1-0 thanks to Paul Ilunga’s second half winner.
The pair were, as a result, promoted to the topflight league next season after finishing the season as 2022/23 second division champions and runners-up respectively, meaning that Gicumbi will wait for yet another season in the second division to push for a promotion back in the Primus National League.
"Football is football nothing is granted, you have to work harder and prepare well to achieve something, I can’t say that we didn’t prepare well but the results show that more efforts are needed to be plugged in so that we can do better next season,” Dukuzimana noted.
"The ambitions for the next season won’t be different from what we had before this season began, we will be here to compete again, trying to win the title and earn topflight league promotion... that’s all we will be there for.”
Gicumbi was relegated to the second division league in the 2021/2022 after finishing bottom on the league table with 18 points in 30 matches