Cuthbert Dube shouldn’t do it alone, it’s not his game but our game, it’s not his Zifa but our Zifa, it’s not his Warriors but our Warriors

On October 10, ’93, a platoon of Warriors, representing the greatest nation on earth, plunged into the den of the Indomitable Lions for a winner-take-all battle for a place at the ’94 World Cup finals in the United States.

Thursday marked the 20th anniversary of that unforgettable day when the Warriors travelled farthest, and fought their bravest fight, in their endless and tough quest to try and dine with the aristocrats of world football at the biggest football festival on the globe.

Expectedly, in a country where the football community appears desperate to cut its ties with a past that promised greatness, and even delivered a lot when the Warriors dined at the Nations Cup in 2004 and 2006, it’s not surprising that no one cared to remember what those gallant men went through in Yaounde when, on Thursday, the occasion came to mark the 20th anniversary of that battle royale.

Tomorrow, the Indomitable Lions plunge into another battle, for the right to play at the 2014 World Cup finals when they take on Tunisia in the first of a two-legged finale, but the Warriors have drifted far away from that circle of greatness they will be spectators, just like their fans, watching from a distance as the battles erupt across the continent.

That Ethiopia are still in the running, in the final qualifiers, and still in with a golden chance to make it to the World Cup finals, should provider a painful reminder to us that even the so-called lightweights, where we belong these days, can also find their way into the equation, and dare to dream big, if they get their priorities right.

Of course, given our alarming decline as a football force in the past few years, our immediate priority should not be about qualifying for the World Cup finals because, in an environment where we can’t even make the Nations Cup finals, that would be tantamount to nursing the impossible dreams of a baby who wants to start to sprint, and beat Usain Bolt, when he hasn’t mastered the art of crawling.

We are not the only ones in a very difficult situation, the South Africans clearly don’t know whether they are going forward, or retreating backwards, the Zambians might have won the Nations Cup finals last year but they were dismal in defence of their title and failed in their World Cup bid despite being given three points for a match they lost in Sudan.

With coach Herve Renard gone, the picture doesn’t look very pretty, and the fact that Southern Africa is the only region not represented, when the 10 remaining African teams battle for the five African slots in the United States, provides the biggest statement of how much we have let down the fans, across the entire region, who also deserve the joy that will be triggered by every goal scored this weekend.

England, the country that provides the Premiership whose clubs have also become our clubs and whose stars have also become our stars, are also in a very difficult situation and while they could qualify for the 2014 World Cup finals, the game’s leadership don’t expect the national team to make any impact in Brazil.

The new English FA chairman Greg Dyke has set up a commission, made up of experts from the Premier League, Football League and Professional Footballers’ Association, to find ways of how they can bring through more homegrown players, impose foreign quotas and a stricter work-permit criteria as part of a cocktail of measures to produce a national team that can win the World Cup come 2022.

The French went through a similar crisis in the ‘70s until their football leadership set up Clairefontaine, the school of excellence that produced a golden generation of footballers that powered them to World Cup glory in ’98.

The German revival package has been explored at length on this blog and Spain set up their Ciudad del Futbol at Las Rozas, just outside Madrid, and that iconic football university perfected tika-taka and the results are there for everyone to see.

So what are we doing as a nation to free ourselves from the quagmire of perpetual under-achievement, which has seen us become so comfortable with failure we now feel it’s normal that we have to watch from a distance, while 10 other teams battle for five places at the next World Cup finals, when only 20 years ago we were so good we came within 90 minutes of booking our ticket to the greatest football festival on earth?

Why have we become so accustomed to failure, so used to our apparent shortcomings, even when they are so awful they release an odour, so unpleasant it pushes all of us rushing out of the room at the first smell of its presence, so content with just being supporting acts even in an era when Ethiopia can force their way to becoming part of the main actors?

The mere fact that we have just had our worst World Cup campaign in history, ending without a win in six games for the first time since such a qualifying formula started, should have been enough cause to make us search our souls, if we are truly committed to making sure that tomorrow will not be as horrible as yesterday.

That we haven’t done that reflects our culpability in the mess that our national game finds itself it in.
There is no joy that can be driven from watching others battle for glory, as will be the case this weekend, as if we were not there when these qualifiers started, as if these nations, just like us, didn’t have zero points to their credit when the marathon got underway and as if, suddenly, those who play for Ethiopia are supermen from another planet when the reality is that there is probably no one as talented as Khama Billiat in that country.

At Least, Someone Is Doing Something Good
Well, someone at Zifa decided to do something very good for our football last week and about 600 school kids converged at the Zimbabwe Grounds in Highfield for the first Grassroots Festival tournament run by the association.

The boys were drawn from schools and academies in the High Glen District and that’s an area which, in the past, produced a galaxy of players, including Joel Shambo, Stanley Ndunduma, George Nechironga, Kudzi Taruvinga and Shacky Tauro, and the boys, all of them under the age of 12, were given the freedom to express themselves.

Zifa communications manager, Xolisani Gwesela, said this was the first in a series of grassroots football tournaments to be held across the country aimed at tapping and promoting talent among primary school children under the age 12.

“This is a concept that Zifa is giving so much importance to because to have a competitive national team it has to start from the grassroots. The systematic promotion of grassroots football is one of Zifa’s priorities,” Gwesela told The Herald. “The objective of grassroots football is to bring football to as many people as possible thus addressing one of Fifa’s missions ‘to develop the game.’”

Gwesela says it is Zifa’s intention to take their programme across the entire country, which means the bandwagon will visit Mzilikazi and Makokoba areas, for the coaches to try and see if they can get the next Peter Ndlovu, and they will also visit Chitungwiza, where 20 years ago, a Polish coach discovered the wealth of football talent that was abundant in that dormitory town.

One gets a feeling that this is an initiative that the Zifa board could have embarked on three years ago, when it came into office, and already by now we could have seen the first dozen or so products of their programme getting to Under-16 and Under-17 level and in two years time, at 19 or thereabout, they would be knocking on the doors of the Warriors.

However, it’s better late than never and last week Cuthbert Dube told me that his personal investment, just to keep Zifa afloat when the association’s technical bankruptcy should have swallowed this organisation, had just passed the US$1 million and that’s a huge investment, whichever way one looks at it, and is unprecedented in the history of our football.

But, after the grassroots tournament last weekend, I was then left wondering about the possible impact of what a tenth of that investment, let’s say US$100 000, would have made to our game if it had been poured into the junior structures, paying the coaches who toil day in and day out across the country with very little, and sometimes no reward at all, to inspire them to try and identify the next Peter Ndlovu, to develop the next Vitalis Takawira.

However, Dube shouldn’t do it alone, it’s not his game but our game, it’s not his Zifa but our Zifa, it’s not his Warriors but our Warriors, it’s not his Young Warriors but our Young Warriors, it’s not his Mighty Warriors but our Mighty Warriors and to nurse our game back to health, somewhere close to where we were this month 20 years ago, it needs the entire nation to play its part.

It needs the Government to play a big part in funding the grassroots programmes, like the tournament that was in Highfield last weekend, to extend that funding from just the Under-12s to the Under-14s and Under-16s, for the companies like Delta to do what South African Breweries are doing in South Africa in funding the talent search for the next Doctor Khumalos of their world.

And some of our football leaders also need to turn a new leaf, emerge from their trenches and start sending the right signals that this is a fraternity that is now ripe for investment, and corporate support, and that certainly won’t happen all that is coming from our camp are the same old choruses that this and that fellow need to be kicked out.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts, that’s what Winston Churchill told us.

What Where The Club Leaders Smoking This Week?
The Worst Decision Of The Week has to be that unfortunate letter by the clubs, including heavyweights Dynamos and Highlanders, to try and arm-twist Mbada Diamonds to go back against their commitment to have the cheapest tickets, for this weekend’s quarter-finals, at US$1.

Why the clubs suddenly felt that they need to cash in from the gates, at the expense of fans who have toiled to raise a hard-to-get US$5, just about every week, to support them even on the occasions when what has been displayed on the field hasn’t been worth even four rand, not only defies logic but lifts the lid on their ruthless streak.

When such a key constituency is provided with a window of relief, as is the case in the Mbada Diamonds Cup, and the burden of them watching their team is lessened by 80 percent, the expectation would have been on embracing that initiative, for the sake of the fans, and commending the sponsors for that.

But somehow, there was a feeling by some of the clubs’ leaders that the fans should pay more, even in a tournament where every cost for the teams, including allowances for the club officials, is bankrolled by the sponsors, and all the clubs need to do is to turn up and compete and, even if they fall in the first round, they still get a handsome payout as reward for their failure.

The players and their coaches have the branded kits and tracksuits, sleep in good hotels, eat nice meals and get paid an allowance for playing something that is part of their work, with all costs taken care of by the sponsors, and somehow, somebody felt that the key constituency of supporters should not be given a helping hand, in terms of cost-cutting, to help them lessen the burden of watching the matches.

If this isn’t selfishness, then I’m not pretty sure what’s the meaning of that word, and you wonder what our club leaders have been smoking this week to make such outrageous demands in a tournament where they only need to show up, at virtually no cost, to take a crack at winning US$130 000, and a further US$110 000 subsidy, or take home US$15 000, in the event you fall at the first round.

To their credit the sponsors have stuck to their guns and the fans will again pay US$1 for the cheapest ticket this weekend to watch the quarter-finals and that matters to Mbada Diamonds because their investment, as much as it is about developing football, is also about exposing their brand to the people.

The more fans that can watch their games, the better for them, because it doesn’t make sense for them to pour in millions of dollars when only 5 000 people, at the end of the tournament, would have been exposed to their tournament.
He who pays the piper, always plays the tune, something like that, I’m sure.

To God Be The Glory!
Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chicharitooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

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