ANGRY JERE READS RIOT ACT

Robson Sharuko Senior Sports Editor
CAPS United president Farai Jere has branded his team’s heartbreaking first-round failure in the Chibuku Super Cup as unacceptable and warned his coaches to either get it right or face the embarrassment of being sacked.

The Green Machine crashed out of the country’s premier knock-out tournament in the first round at Rufaro on Sunday after a penalty shoot-out loss at the hands of a ZPC Kariba side that has been struggling all season.

Makepekepe were seconds away from sealing their quarter-final place, leading 2-1 in regulation time, when they conceded a goal deep in time added on as ZPC Kariba forced the game into the shoot-out lottery. That last-gasp equaliser, when all seemed lost, meant that the visitors had the momentum going into the shoot-out, which they won in comprehensive fashion. It means CAPS now only have to fight for the league title, if their fans have to celebrate a success story this season, exactly 10 years after they were last crowned champions of this country.

That will require an impressive run, from now until the end of the season, and hoping that high-flying Chicken Inn and Triangle, who lead the marathon, also falter as the going gets tough.

CAPS United have been the stand-out team when it comes to away performances in the championship race, but the Green Machine have dropped a lot of points in their backyard where they have struggled to find the comforts that home should provide.

Jere, who took over as the majority shareholder from his partner Twine Phiri this year, ending a period when the Green Machine were crippled by a severe financial squeeze, has demanded that CAPS United find their way back to the glory fields.

He brought in six players, during the mid-season transfer window, including former skipper Method Mwanjali, to try and bolster his team. A number of other high-profile players, who are in the final six months of their contracts at their clubs, have also committed themselves to joining the Green Machine next season.

But Jere, whose takeover ended the turbulence that had rocked the Green Machine, leading to the farce where players abandoned their league game against How Mine in protest, wants a team that should be delivering now and not next year.

He told The Herald yesterday that his team’s elimination from the Chibuku Super Cup was unacceptable and demanded that his coaches deliver or face the axe.

“The results of our last two games against Harare City and ZPC Kariba are unacceptable and appear to suggest that the standards that we want this team to maintain are not being met by the people we have tasked with doing that job.

“There is no reason why it should be business as usual when the conditions of service at the club have changed for the better and the coaches and players are being given what is due to them on time.

“We cannot embrace poor results because we have fans who need a team that wins matches, a team that wins trophies because that is the CAPS they used to know and the one that we promised we were going to give them.

“Our job as the directors is to ensure that we secure resources to enable our coaches and players to operate in an environment which helps them to do as well as they possibly can and I believe that we have been doing just that.

“Therefore, when we find that the results are not as we expect, we have to examine the whole structure and see where we are coming short and make changes, if necessary, because this is a business that is based entirely on results and when we don’t get those results we have to act.

“It’s not about whether or not we like this or that guy but simply about results and we have to be ruthless if those results don’t come and we feel the team is not performing to our expectations as has been the case in the last two games.

“I have already told the coaches that this is unacceptable and the ball is in their court to either deliver or face the sack because there is no reason why they shouldn’t be producing the results that we demand and which our fans want.”

Jere revealed that he had given his technical staff two games to show him that they were up to the task, demanded by such a huge responsibility of leading CAPS United back to the glory fields, or the board would be forced to review their relationship and look for alternative solutions elsewhere.

“Unfortunately, in this game it’s all about results and when they don’t come we have to ask questions and take corrective measures until we get it right,” Jere said.

“When Mark Harrison left, we gave Mark Mathe a chance because we believed that he had the capacity and he had learnt something from the Englishman.

“We didn’t want to rock our boat by making unnecessary changes and we felt that we had a stable technical team that should be given a chance to continue what they were doing with Harrison.

“But I have to say that we are very unhappy with the results from the last two matches and our elimination from the Chibuku Cup, when we appeared set to advance, was depressing and a bitter pill to swallow even right now, some of us haven’t recovered from that blow.

“We have been known as the Cup Kings in the past and when we are falling in the first round against a team that is struggling, it’s unacceptable to say the least.

“We are letting down a lot of people, our fans who demand that we are successful, the sponsors who need a team like ours to be there in the competition and even our rivals who wanted a high-profile game against us. “Just imagine what a Chibuku Cup final between CAPS and Dynamos could do to boost the tournament and also to lift our football but we failed on that front while our rivals found a way to win their match.

“We can’t say that we played well when we lost because the bottom line is that we lost a game that was there for the taking and we did not have the technical leadership that we needed to just close out the match in those few remaining seconds.

“We probably didn’t even train for penalties even though we knew that they could come into play to decide such a match and all that builds up to this frustration that we have, as the board, about what is happening.

“The coaches have to deliver, do their job, and we have demanded that they show us that they can do it, in the next two games, or we will be forced to look for others who can do better.”

With a number of high-profile coaches, including Callisto Pasuwa, currently jobless, CAPS United will not find it difficult to bring in competent staff and the pressure is now on Mathe and his staff to deliver or face the boot.

Jere said his players, too, needed to raise their game and perform better than they have been doing in the past few games.