Wenslus Murape
THE Warriors have a golden opportunity to boost their chances of returning to the AFCON finals if they can beat Namibia’s Brave Warriors at Orlando Stadium this evening.
The match is a repeat of the two teams’ battle, at the same stadium, on Thursday.
The Warriors won that match 1-0 but even their coach Michael Nees admits that it wasn’t the performance he expected from his men and the only positive thing is that they managed to squeeze a win.
Namibia were the better team but they didn’t convert their chances while the Zimbabwe defence, led by veteran goalkeeper Washington Arubi, was impressive.
We agree with Nees that at this level of the game what matters is the result rather than the performance.
We played very well against the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon, in what was probably our best game for a very long time, but we only picked up a point.
Against Namibia we were poor, especially from our midfield to our strikers, but we found a way to get all the three points and that is what matters.
When teams qualify for the AFCON or World Cup finals, they don’t talk about the beauty of their performances but about the points they managed to accrue.
Those points come from winning games and our boys showed commendable character, and spirit, and if we can win without playing well, it gives us some comfort that if we play well then we will win the game easily.
We hope our boys will pay well today.
Namibia have lost all their three group matches in the qualifiers but that does not say the real story of their campaign.
The Brave Warriors have only lost by a single goal, in all their three games against us, Kenya and Cameroon.
They were unlucky in Cameroon where the Indomitable Lions needed a late goal, scored from an offside position which the match officials ignored, to win the game.
This means that the Namibians are quite competitive as a unit.
What we need is to see an improvement from our midfield, which should be our strongest arm, given the quality in that department.
Our two captains, Marvelous Nakamba and Marshall Munetsi, play in that department and there is also the excellent Andy Rinomhota.
Somehow, we have struggled to click in this department and hopefully Nees can change things around and find a way to make this trio impose itself on our opponents.
We are also coming short when it comes to making our presence felt in attack where we are struggling to find a natural number 9 who can impose himself on our opponents and score goals.
We have tried a number of players but they seem to be struggling to give us what we really need.
We believe if we win this evening we will boost our chances of making it to the AFCON finals because, in reality, we would just be needing to win one of our last two games against Kenya and Cameroon.
Online Reporter