Andrew
Hastings Kamanga
IT is very embarrassing that a team like Dynamos, easily the most decorated team in the country with nearly 60 years of playing top-flight football, find themselves caught up in an age-fraud scandal.
They were recently disqualified from the Marvelous Nakamba Foundation (MNF) Invitational Under-17 Tournament in Bulawayo. This is a club that has built a reputation for producing and nurturing young talent, several of whom have gone on to represent Zimbabwe.
Age fraud is done for one main reason: To have an unfair advantage over competitors, and sadly this is a common practice in African football.
Zimbabwe is currently suspended (and has been suspended from other tournaments in the past) from participating in COSAFA youth tournaments as a result of age-cheating.
The practice is, however, counter-productive as it does not foster optimum conditions to develop talent.
Real talent will remain untapped and denied the opportunity to develop.
This is likely to force them to drop out or lose interest.
It is important for football authorities to realise that the most important aspect of coaching is the athletes and that sport belongs to athletes. Children’s participation in sport plays a crucial role in their socialisation.
The biggest problem pegging back local football is failure to create a philosophy and development pathway for both coaching and playing.
A philosophy is a comprehensive statement outlining beliefs and behaviours that characterise playing or coaching practices.
Development of an effective philosophy is shaped by many factors.
The Long-Term Athlete Development Model (LTADM) emphasises the important phases of athlete development.
It is believed that 10 years or 10 000 hours are required to acquire competencies to become a professional athlete.
For athletes, learning occurs at a fast pace from the onset of training but declines with time as training progresses.
LTADM is very much an athlete-centred approach to the delivery of nearly every sport.
It does not only focus on performance but attempts to maximise everyone’s participation and potential.
This is done through four main stages:
1: Active start/Fundamentals: at this stage, children acquire physical literacy and fundamental movement skills. This happens between the ages of 0-9 for boys and 0-8 for girls.
2: Learning to train: At this stage, children are working on physical literacy and fundamental sport skills; this occurs between the ages of 9-12 for boys and 8-11 years for girls.
3 & 4: Training to train and training to compete: At this stage, athletes are focused on acquiring the necessary mental and physical capability to progress, increase competence and sustain the demands of intense competitiveness of the sport.
It’s important for coaches who work with young children to have the necessary knowledge, skills and competences to enable players to reach their potential.
LTADM is a popular model that has been adopted by most sporting institutions developing athletes across the globe.
Without a proper youth development pathway, our players will not learn the fundamentals of modern football at a young age.
This, however, makes it very difficult to make the grade in decent leagues.
The impact that a coach can have on players should never be underestimated, as it goes beyond the sport itself.
Coaches have a duty of care in the absence of parents. Developing players should never be compromised by introducing them to corrupt practices such as age-cheating.
Coaches have to be cognisant that a win-at-all-cost mentality needs to be eradicated at youth level. It seems to be one of the reasons of age falsification by players.
Sport is about developing character and not just talent, and creating an environment for athletes to make mistakes as part of the learning process.
Coaches must provide an honest assessment of athletes’ weaknesses and strengths, and this assessment assists parents and the athlete to understand their true potential.
It also guides the athlete to set realistic short- or long-term goals.
Players mature differently and will have differences physically, technically, socially or psychologically; therefore, coaches need to understand that different coaching programmes will be required for different players at different times.
The coach, parent and child relationship is referred to as sporting triangle, as inter-relationship of these three parties is inevitable.
Parents are accepted as a vital element in the coaching process.
Some rogue football agents, coaches, administrators and parents are also involved in doctoring players ages.
This phenomenon, however, comes with some consequences, with the main one being that cheats will outshine deserving players, depriving them of the opportunity to develop or to be scouted.
Those denied the opportunity to play could lose interest and drop out of the sport completely.
The advantage age-cheats have is that of physicality and not other attributes of football development such as tactical, psychological, technical and social competence.
The late coach Ben Koufie once said “Zimbabwe will never qualify for any major tournament even if they hire a coach from the moon.”
He was simply pointing at the lack of necessary skills and qualities to effectively govern our football.
The situation seems to be getting worse.
It is high time Government criminalises practices such as age fraud, as they are the catalyst of criminal activities which include match-fixing.
There are huge advantages from fielding the correct age group at youth tournaments.
Athletes build memory banks of performances that help build their confidence and self-esteem.
It provides them with an opportunity to play with other players of the same ability as them or better.
Further, it enables performers to make an honest assessment of the level of development the athletes are at.
It can also be an opportunity to be scouted to play at a higher level at home or abroad.
Coaches who are successful engage in reflective practice. It is about increasing self-awareness, critical evaluation of strengths and weaknesses, developing a deep insight of practical knowledge and learning, and also increasing accountability.
Coaches need to be accredited and have the necessary up-to-date qualifications to coach young performers.
Continuous personal development is crucial.
It should follow that if a nation has good youth teams, the indication should be that the future is bright for the senior national team.
The introduction of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan has been a huge success in curbing age-cheating in a number of tournaments across the world.
Other governments have rolled out programmes to stop age-cheating such as providing a child with a number when they first enrol for primary school and this number remains with them.
If one fails to produce this number, the child is unable to play football at youth level.
It is not good enough to just assemble Under-17, Under-20 or an Under-23 squad without a proper pathway for youth development that teachs fundamentals in young performers.
This has been caused by self-serving and corrupt football officials.
Development of young performers is about employing high standard of coaching, good facilities and better-quality matches.
Children between the ages of 6 to 13/14 should be prohibited from playing 11 vs 11 as it hinders their development.
The model of small-sided games is an effective method for player development because it develops ball mastery skills and game awareness.
It also provides an opportunity for players to have more contact with the ball, better decision-making and increased opportunities to score.
All these are benefits that arise without the tactical regimentation that usually happen in 11 vs 11.
Appropriate sizes of pitches, goalposts, footballs supported by equal playing time for every child, simplified rules and tactics must be introduced to produce technically-gifted players if Zimbabwe is to have any hope of doing well at major youth tournaments.
*Hastings Kamanga is a UK-based Zimbabwean who is the academy coach at AFC Rusden and Diamonds. He holds a BA Hons in Football Studies and an MA in Leadership and Management of Sport and Physical Activities from the University of Bedfordshire.
Online Reporter