adminSouth Africa, the country with the richest football association on the continent, came short in their bid to qualify for the 2012 African Nations Cup finals.
Mosimane’s brutal but frank assessment of his work as Bafana Bafana coach was a refreshing analysis of his contribution in the failed bid by Bafana Bafana to play in the 2012 Afcon finals in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea next year.
He could also have been speaking on behalf of Norman Mapeza, the youthful coach we entrusted to lead our Warriors to their first Nations Cup appearance since their last dance with the best teams in Africa in Egypt five years ago, who also came short in Cape Verde on Saturday. Mosimane could also have been speaking on behalf of the men and woman who make up the Zifa board, the people we voted into office in March last year hoping that bringing in some new blood, and some familiar old faces, would breathe life into a franchise that had gone dormant under Wellington Nyatanga and company.
As we begin the difficult task of scavenging the wreckage of yet another failed bid to qualify for the Nations Cup finals, and yet another all-too familiar fall at the last hurdle, it is important to make it clear that
Cuthbert Dube and his board have failed their first big mission.
And, just like Nyatanga’s group before them, chances are that the new leadership could turn out to be nothing but a group of guys who duped us that they would change the face of our football, and improve the fortunes of the Warriors, only to find that the task was not as easy as it appeared when they preached their campaign gospel.
They were in control, from game one in this Nations Cup campaign, and while Sunday Chidza-mbwa’s loss was a big blow, Norman Mapeza started well in Liberia with a point and, interestingly, the team that finally qualified from our group, Mali, only picked one point away from home in their entire campaign.
Mali got 10 points, which we should have got, had we simply won all our three home matches, but Zifa’s foolish meddling in a technical team that had won a point in Liberia, ahead of the next home game against
Cape Verde, turned into a grave digging process where our Nations Cup hopes were eventually buried.
Why some Zifa board members decided to employ Tom Saintfiet, a man whose record on the continent was as poor as Namibia had performed in the current Nations Cup campaign and whose CV would certainly not be put on the same shelf as Misheck Chidzambwa, ahead of the Cape Verde game, rather than building on what Mapeza had achieved in Liberia, will remain a big talking point for years.
As it turned out, Saintfiet’s rushed appointment was bungled badly, leading to the Belgian being ordered to leave the country after flouting the immigration laws, but the comical elevation of Madinda Ndlovu into the hot seat, by the same hawks at Zifa that had brought in Saintfiet, turned the whole programme into a nightmare.
A crucial week, where we were supposed to have concentrated on beating Cape Verde, was wasted with focus on the madness in the technical team and, when it was eventually decided that Mapeza and Madinda would be co-coaches, the damage had been done and the Warriors could not recover.
Benedict Moyo, one of the key Zifa board members who pushed through Saintfiet’s appointment, has acknowledged publicly that they got it wrong then but, as the nation starts to count the cost of missing the 2012 Afcon finals, with those dropped two points casting a big shadow on our failure, it’s becoming clear that the apology was too little, too late.
By the time Mapeza assumed full control of the Warriors, ahead of the trip to Mali when Joey Antipas was brought back as his assistant and Madinda shown the exit door, it was now just an uphill battle with most of
it being repair jobs where our team, whose star players are just out of their teenage years, had to play pressure games where losing meant the end of the road. To their credit they did well against Mali and Liberia at home but the pressure was always going to catch up with them and, in Cape Verde on Saturday, in a horror show in the first 13 minutes, it all came to an end.
We believe that our Cape Verde game, here at home, was the defining moment of our campaign and if we had won it, as we should in all matches in our backyard, we certainly would have qualified.
Zifa have to take stock of where they bungled, and if they are honest to themselves they will see a number of key moments when they did not provide the leadership expected from them, and if they can pick lessons from that then the better because the 2013 Afcon campaign starts in just a few months from now.
We feel the current Warriors’ squad has the potential to become a really good national team that can make all of us proud and while they will certainly not display their stuff in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, we could build on them to make a big impact in South Africa in 2013.
Emotions are running high right now but there is need for some cool heads and Mapeza and his technical team should be kept in place and, if there is any improvement that could be done, maybe it would be to bring in an experienced coach in an advisory role. And why Zifa haven’t utilised Klaus Dieter Pagels, in the Warriors, while using him in the Mighty Warriors, will only arm the conspiracy theorists who believe this
Zifa board didn’t want the Warriors to qualify.
If the Mighty Warriors can go into a training camp in Germany, why then do our Warriors have to play a crucial Afcon qualifier, away from home, after only training together twice, without ever assembling at home, and arriving in enemy territory in batches, coming from different locations, as if they were a platoon of mercenaries?
Until we give the Warriors the respect they deserve, and the ideal preparations to boost their cause, it’s sad that we will continue to sing the blues and this very talented crop of Warriors might not taste the good wine of playing at the Afcon finals.
Online Reporter