CAPS United

A pharmaceutical firm on Manchester Road in Harare wanted something for its workers on a Saturday, and Maurice Kraemer built it a football team. Central African Pharmaceuticals gave the club its initials, the address gave it an early nickname — the Manchester Road Boys — and the green and white kit gave it the one that stuck outside Zimbabwe. Registered as CAPS Rovers in the Northern Region, it took the name CAPS United in 1979.

What followed was a decade in which the club was defined by knockout football rather than by seasons. Four Castle Cups in a row between 1980 and 1983, then five more up to 2008: nine in all, against five league titles. Zimbabwean supporters settled on Makepekepe, and the press on Cup Kings. In the same run the side reached the quarter-finals of the African Cup Winners' Cup in 1982 and again in 1983.

The mid-1980s nearly ended it. Black Rhinos took most of the first-choice players, and the club spent years assembling another one. Steven Kwashi brought back the championship in 1996; Charles Mhlauri won it twice running in 2004 and 2005. In 2004 a car accident killed Blessing Makunike and Gary Mashoko.

Khama Billiat began his senior career at Rufaro in 2010 before Ajax Cape Town and Mamelodi Sundowns. Six years later Lloyd Chitembwe took the club to a fifth league title, and in 2017 it reached the group stage of the CAF Champions League.

Rufaro Stadium holds 45,000, and the Harare derby against Dynamos fills it.