African football at the crossroads

currently ranked in top 10 on the continent will be missing at the 2012 Nations Cup finals.
Holders Egypt will not be participating and Nigeria, Cameroon. South Africa will also be missing, the Rainbow Nation suffering the humiliation of hosting a successful 2010 Fifa World Cup but falling short on the continent under a cloud of embarrassment having failed to interpret Caf rules and regulations.
Surprise qualifiers at the 2012 Nations Cup finals are Botswana, and Niger and while some members of the Big Five will be missing in Malabo, Bata, Libreville and Franceville, it’s likely there will be a spectacle at this showcase come next January.
In Africa, the death knell has been the lack of sponsorship for the game, but how do you sponsor a game that is littered with lack of corporate governance?
African economies are bad, and sponsors are tight with their money.
Sponsors are not a charity, they are looking for mileage.
One other mistake that football properties make is that they only display the sponsor marketing message and it ends there.
A winning football property should help the sponsor do business. The stadiums have a captive market, the sponsorship message should go beyond the stadiums and create business for the sponsors. With the pulling effect of football, this is possible.
In Zimbabwe, Mbada Diamonds have changed the face of Zimbabwean football, by taking the major knockout competition to the remotest parts of Zimbabwe.
Mbada has helped to grow the fan base.
This knockout competition is destined for greater heights.
Mbada seem to have understood human behavior and, in future as the tournament evolves, they are certain to build a relationship with the fans.
The Government of Zimbabwe has indicated that they are willing to pour financial resources into the game, but the game should have a corporate culture that inspires confidence and trust.
Sadly this is missing in our game.
It is critical to look at past sponsorship and establish why those who used to fund us stopped and take time to listen to their concerns, addressing the issues at stake.
Corporate governance has been raised in certain circles as a key issue and it is time to review our good governance practices and institute structures and policies that give potential partners the confidence they need to inject more sponsorship.
Sponsor/ Donor cultivation is critical.
Nigeria
One of the Big Five on the continent, they were eliminated by Guinea in the race for the 2012 Nations Cup and Samson Siasia lost his job after the technical committee ruled that, he had failed in his mandate.
One may be tempted to ask, what is the mandate of such funny technical committees and who will fire such committees in the event that they, too, come short?
There were widespread issues of indiscipline in the Nigerian camp. Administratively, Nigeria has always struggled, there is no doubt that the talent is abundant, but it has not been harnessed into a winning force. Yes, they have in the past won major youth tournaments, which may be attributed to age-cheating but, thanks to advent of technology like MRI scan, which keeps the cheats out of youth tournaments, Nigeria has struggled.
Cameroon
Another notable scalp and one wonders what has really happened to the Indomitable Lions. The Paul Biya Government has always used the Lions as a political mascot. But this time it has failed. Cameroon have fired their coach, Paul Le Guen, and appointed Dennis Lavagne, another Frenchman.
They must do a reality check and find out why the national team that used to bring all people together is now causing so much disunity in the country. Football is a religion in Cameroon and if this is not checked it may escalate into a civil war.
The commentators have blamed Samuel Eto’o for the demise of the Lions, insisting that he can’t be player and coach at the same time. Some have claimed that a curse has been placed on the Yaoundé Omnsport Stadium and whenever, the team is playing at home it does not win.
It is alleged that the Government did not compensate the natives, who owned the land and where the stadium was built. In all honesty, this is not the case at all, the fall of Cameroon can largely be attributed to lack of a transition system from the days of Rigobert Song.
What was the master plan for ensuring the smooth transition of the new players into the ageing Cameroon squad?
This was a blatant administrative shortcoming and, like we always do in Africa, mediocrity is acceptable.
Egypt
It has always been claimed that Egypt were affected by the political situation that prevailed during the Nations Cup qualifiers but one cannot escape the view that this was always coming, when coach Shehata was fired by the federation, he also indicated that Egyptian football has stalled administratively because of lack of forward planning.
The older generation needed to be replaced, and there was no grand plan for this mammoth task.
The Egyptian Federation has since appointed Bob Bradley, the former United States coach, to restore lost pride.
While talent is key in football development, administrative acumen is equally critical.
Zambia
Zambia has taught Africa an unforgettable lesson in football and political terms. Africa is replete with so many examples of football coaches, who are fired for failing their mandate, and the opposite happened in Zambia when Dario Bonneti helped Chipolopolo to the 2012 Nations Cup finals but was subsequently fired because FAZ felt that the team was winning in an ugly manner and stood no chance, under the coach, to win the tournament.
South Africa
Administrators are accountable to the fans and the events that culminated in Bafana Bafana failing to qualify for the Nations Cup are totally unacceptable.
What was the game plan of Bafana Bafana, before they plunged into the final game against Sierra Leone?
Who can dispute the argument that the whole technical team and the administrators at Safa need to be fired?
This was a national scandal, and one wonders what was the role of the media in all this malaise?
The sight of the coach, asking the media, “Have we qualified,” and being congratulated by the same confused media for a qualification that never was, has to be one of the lowest points in African football.
In any event, if you fail to beat Sierra Leone at home, then you probably do not deserve to be at Afcon finals.
Zimbabwe – Another failed campaign
With so much damage done to the players’ integrity with the Asiagate saga, one wonders why the bulk of the national team players, who were alleged to have been party to the plot, took part in the qualifiers.
Asiagate must have affected the players to the core, both mentally and physically.
I believe that those fingered should not have participated because their mental focus at the game, with questions stalking their integrity, became compromised.
The diabolical mistakes by the captain, Method Mwanjali, in Cape Verde were clearly a product of the psychological state of the player.
A lot has been said about the appointment of Tom Sainfiet, to the GNU between Mandida and Norman, and the draw with Cape Verde at home, but we seem to be blinded to immaterial aspects of the game.
What was the state of preparedness of the Warriors for all these qualifiers?
What was our game plan for Cape Verde?
What was the mental state of the players who were playing in Cape Verde against a backdrop of a Zifa Independent Disciplinary Commission back home waiting to be unveiled?
Was the technical team, headed by Norman Mapeza, competent enough and what was the mandate for Norman for these qualifiers?
He could have been given the mandate to just build a team, for qualification in the future.
This was our golden opportunity to qualify but we failed again and the legacy we leave for generations to come is that we were always the Warriors who choked at the last hurdle.
Zimbabwe has the talent. Cape Verde do not. So where did we fail?
Does Zifa have a strategic plan that is clear, shared by all involved and open to public scrutiny? How often does Zifa hold strategic reviews? Zifa is accountable to whom?
The buck stops with whom at Zifa? What skills do we have in all the different structures to make Zifa effective and efficient?
The national team’s failure is just a reflection of a myriad of factors needing attention.
That Zifa has serious shortcomings is the signal we receive as soccer lovers.
Losing is more than just failing to score by a player but a rumple jumble of factors that include proximate, distal and underlying issues.
It’s always easy to blame the pawn. Our failure to qualify again and again reflects how we govern and manage football in Zimbabwe.
Surely we reward failure and that is unacceptable and that will never give us the results we need. It is time we invest in results based monitoring and evaluation.
It is time we develop and instil a corporate perception of soccer at local and national level.
Football is business or a corporate activity that needs adoption of corporate strategies or business models to steer it so as to realise a national vision enshrined in the Zifa constitution and national policy on Sport in Zimbabwe and, above all, meet the expectations of the Zimbabwean soccer fans at large.
Football coaches and administrators are assessed on results and not by sentiment.
Look at what Moses Chunga is doing with Gunners, Calisto Pasuwa with Dynamos, Rahman Gumbo with FC Platinum, Bigboy Mawiwi with Harare City and the veteran administrator Fred Moyo with Hwange.
The media, given their powerful role as gatekeepers and agenda setters also contributed to the Warriors’ failure to qualify.
The media should have realised that there is a difference between fiction and reality.
Whilst it is commendable to build hype, the expectations should have been managed properly. A case in point is what happened with the Mighty Warriors, having been crowned the Cosafa champions, there was so much media hype and when they failed in Mozambique, this same media should have savaged the Mighty Warriors, but like we always do in Africa, it was one of those things.
Up to now I do not understand why the Warriors were treated to a party after having failed to qualify. Are we entrenching a culture of incentivising failure?
Until such time we do not celebrate mediocrity, and then we will always be the nearly men and women of African football.
l Milton Nyamadzawo is the former Manager of Mwana Africa Football Club and writes in his own capacity. He can be contacted at [email protected]