CAPS Utd to step up pre-season preps

Grace Chingoma Senior Sports Reporter

ONCE bitten twice shy, is the mantra ringing through the CAPS United camp during this off-season as they seek to avoid a repeat of the chaotic pre-season preparations which derailed their Castle Lager Premiership football campaign this year.

The former champions are looking forward to having better preparations for next season.

Makepekeke are one of the few clubs that took pre-season seriously, touring neighbouring countries and setting up training camps. Last year, the club even started the league campaign without a coach before re-securing the services of gaffer Lloyd Chitembwe.

CAPS United director, Farai Jere, says they have been evaluating their performance from last season and they have identified what they did wrong in the just-ended campaign and are willing to correct the mistakes they made.

Jere, who is also the Premier Soccer League chairman, last week graduated from the University of Zimbabwe with a Master’s Degree in Strategic Leadership.

“Next season we need to have better preparations; we are introspecting where we went wrong. You cannot have a team that goes out to compete without doing pre-season preparation. That’s what defines the whole season. Those six weeks are scientific, and they define the whole season how the team is going to perform.

“That’s why you find that we could spend a lot of money, we used to do that, going to Mozambique, Zambia for camping and even Kariba because that is the time which is more critical than the actual matches that we play,” said Jere. Jere concedes that their unpreparedness might have contributed to the woes that saw them finishing 11th on the final log table with 40 points from 34 games, a whopping 35 points adrift of champions FC Platinum. A player is shaped there (pre-season training) and it’s unfortunate that this year we didn’t do that and many people thought that we were not going to even participate in the league,” he said.

Although Jere could not divulge their pre-season plans, he indicated that the club is not going to have an overhaul but will make a few necessary additions to their squad.

Some players that were involved in a number of strikes that dogged the club for the larger part of this season would be parting ways with the club.

However, Jere says this does not mean that there will be a wholesale clearance of players.

“The players that have remained at the club after a bad patch of going for seven or eight matches without a win, they deserve a place here. You can also confirm, if you are being objective that the way they have played in the league’s last five games really define former champions.

“So these are the type of players we want. We are not going to recruit a lot of players. We have just got one or two, three bad apples that we have and we have got players that we need to build our team around, and these are the discussions that we have been having with the coach and the chief executive, where we want to go, what are we going to do, which players are we retaining and who do they want to bring in and so forth, so that next year from day one we are competitive, so this is what we are working on,” said Jere.

CAPS United axed some of their key players in May, namely Ronald Chitiyo, Dennis Dauda, goalkeeper Simba Chinani and Clive Augusto as they sought to bring stability back after the industrial action that nearly threatened the fulfilment of their home game against Cranborne Bullets at the National Sports Stadium on May 2.

The protests and strikes did not end with the firing of the ring leaders and the club is likely going to release a few more players.

“We have great talent at the club at the moment with some youngsters who don’t want to be disturbed and we are very happy with the stability which is there.

“CAPS United will be very different next year. We started preparing from the time that we realised we were not in the championship race,” said Jere. The Harare businessman believes the presence of coach Lloyd Chitembwe will ensure that sanity prevails at the club as they seek to restore the glory days. Chitembwe is working on the players that he wants to add to the club.

The club last won the league title in 2016.

They are focused and looking forward to the new season. They have some positives from the just-ended campaign. Their top marksman William Manondo finished as the top goal scorer with 16 goals. He was also crowned the second-best player in the league behind the Soccer Star of the Year, Walter Musona.