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confidence, and the official guarantee that his job was safe, despite the national team’s heartbreaking failure to qualify for the 2012 Nations Cup finals.
Mapeza, who was accompanied by team manager Shariff Mussa, briefed the Zifa president about their doomed mission in Cape Verde where the Warriors fell to a 1-2 defeat and were eliminated from the 2012 Nations Cup finals in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.
A win in Cape Verde would have taken the Warriors to Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, after Mali could only draw 2-2 against Liberia, but two huge blunders by skipper Method Mwanjali gifted the home side their goals and a spirited second half show by Zimbabwe wasn’t ultimately good enough to overturn the deficit.
The Zifa board is set to meet in Ha-rare next Friday where the 2012 Na-tions Cup campaign will be reviewed but Dube reiterated yesterday, following his meeting with Mapeza, that the coach’s job was guaranteed and he will be in charge during the 2013 Nations Cup and 2014 World Cup qualifiers.
Dube said to demonstrate their confidence in Mapeza’s services as Warriors’ coach, Zifa had already lined up programmes for the gaffer, which will see him traveling to Brazil for an attachment and to South Africa, next week, where he will spend weeks personally monitoring the performance of Zimbabwean players there and also interacting with their club coaches.
“Once again I have to make it clear that Norman is not going anywhere and he will still be our national coach when we begin our qualifying games for the 2013 African Cup of Nations finals,” said Dube.
“I held a meeting today (yesterday) with Norman and Shariff and we discussed, at length, what happened in Cape Verde and we share similar disappointment that we did not qualify for the finals.
“I gave Norman my assurance that he remains the coach of the Warriors because we believe that he is doing a good job in charge of the team and he should continue with the work that he has been doing because we feel the best for the team is what lies ahead.
“There is need for stability in the technical department of the national team and we are going to provide that and that is why we are even investing in Norman so that he upgrades his coaching skills and we will unroll the programme that we have for him in that regard.
“We are going to send Norman to Brazil for a football programme there and next week he will be going to South Africa where we want him to monitor the performance of our players and also interact with their club coaches.”
Dube said although he had called for a Zifa board meeting next Friday to review the 2012 Nations Cup campaign, the issue of the Warriors’ coach was not on the agenda.
“There are a lot of things to discuss, the preparations that we had and how we can do better in future and the problems that we had with funding and how we can overcome that,” said Dube.
“We are also glad that the Government is also coming on board and committing itself to playing a big role in the national team and that can only help us to come up with a very strong team.
“Once we have the Government on board, most of the challenges that we faced in the last qualifiers will disappear and we can have better preparations for our team and our players, too, will have better focus.”
The Zifa boss said Mapeza will be in charge when the Warriors play their next assignment, a friendly international, on November 15.
“We are disappointed that we didn’t qualify because we really wanted to be there at the finals but that is not the end of the road and that is why we have already started preparations for our next assignments,” said Dube.
“We are going to have a friendly international on the next date set by Fifa for such a game, on November 15, and we are still considering the opposition and it could either be South Africa, Botswana or Zambia.
“It’s important that we have this friendly because we are committed to keep building our team and also we also need to remain active so that we can work at improving our Fifa ranking, which also helps in getting quality opposition when it comes to these friendlies.
“We intend to play as many friendly internationals as possible until we get our team right and in good shape ahead of the 2013 Afcon qualifiers.”
Dube, who did not travel to Cape Verde, said he had reviewed a recording of the Warriors’ game on Saturday and felt the national team were unlucky not to emerge victorious in that match.
“The team that we have right now is very good and I think in the second half of their game in Cape Verde they really showed their true qualities and, on another day, could have been rewarded with a win their
performance deserved,” said Dube.
“But in football, it’s not always the better team that wins because, in some cases, luck can also play its part and I feel Lady Luck was not on our side in Cape Verde.
“We are not crybabies and we will come out of all this even stronger.
“There are lessons to be picked from that defeat, just like from any other game, and for us the main challenge is to keep building this team so that it keeps improving because we are happy with the material that we have.
“There is also room for other players to also come into the team and that is now the responsibility of the coach and his team to see where they can add and where they can subtract.
“I have been really touched by the number of people who have called me just to say that they were impressed by the manner the team fought and why they feel we need to give this project more time.”
Mapeza apologised to the nation on Sunday after his team’s failure to qualify.
“I think the guys did well . . . there is a bright future for these boys,” said Mapeza.
“It’s (the defeat) painful, I feel sorry for the boys, I feel sorry for the entire nation and I really appreciated the support that we got from everyone at home but that’s football.
“At times things do not turn out to be what you have wanted them to be .I still feel we could have won this one.”
Online Reporter