BRITISH immigration officials were searching yesterday for eight Zimbabwean footballers who vanished after an exhibition match in Bradford.

Officials realised that they were missing only when the players failed to board their flights back to Harare. Two officials, one of whom had been left behind to help to track down the missing footballers, have also disappeared.

Yesterday the Football Association criticised the decision to go ahead with the tour without its permission. An FA spokesman said: “We will be contacting Fifa [football’s governing body] to express our concern.”

The missing men, some of whom are famous at home, are believed to have joined hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans who are living and working illegally in Britain after fleeing economic collapse and political persecution under President Mugabe.

They include two members of the Zimbabwean national team, David Sengu and Raymond Undi. Sengu is reported to have sold his car before he went on the trip.

In Zimbabwe, the defections were condemned by the state-controlled press.

Godfrey Japajapa, fixtures secretary of the Zimbabwe premier league, was quoted in the Sunday Mail as saying that the men’s behaviour was “shameful” and that they had “embarrassed their team and the country at large”.

The Herald described it as “one of the biggest crises to hit the country’s battered national sporting discipline”. It accused the Zimbabwe Football Association [Zifa] of a diplomatic gaffe, adding: “Imagine the bad blood now between Zifa and the British Embassy, who will feel duped by this association that these people were going on a real football trip.”

Six of the missing players are from CAPS United, the league champions, and two are from Highlanders FC. Two officials from CAPS United also disappeared. About 40 players and officials had travelled to Bradford for the friendly match at Odsal Stadium, home of the Bradford Bulls rugby league team.

Zimbabwean officials are thought to have the missing men’s passports. A Home Office spokesman said that steps were being taken to “identify, locate and remove” those who had breached their visas.

ONES THAT GOT AWAY

2004 Nine members of the Afghan national football team disappeared in Italy before a match to celebrate the fall of the Taleban

2003 Five players from a women’s cricket team from India vanished three days into a tour of Britain. One of the women was last seen loading a car with luggage outside the house where she had been staying in London

2003 The captain and two other members of the Sri Lankan women’s cricket team went missing during a stopover in London after a tour of the West Indies

2002 At the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, 21 athletes from Sierra Leone disappeared. Of 58 players from Nigeria and Ghana granted visas for the 2002 Open golf championship, only five set foot on the course

1998 The entire Ethiopian soccer team disappeared in Rome while en route to an international and were never heard of again

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