dyton mupawaenda
Newly-appointed Warriors coach Michael Nees officially started work yesterday following his unveiling to the media by the Zifa Normalisation Committee.
It should mark a new era in trying to normalise football in Zimbabwe and gives us hope the Warriors will be returning to the AFCON finals. Having a fill time coach appointed before the start of the 2025 AFCON qualifiers is a good thing although waiting until the eve of matches is not ideal.
The interim Zifa leadership had not appointed a substantive coach since taking charge of the national association in July last year.
Baltemar Brito, Norman Mapeza and Jairos Tapera took turns to guide the Warriors on caretaker basis and all the spells were underwhelming.
The coaches could not have achieved much given the time and resources they were given.
They had very little time to prepare for crucial matches while lack of long term contracts meant that they only cared about the immediate task. There were no long term plans as seen by the Malawi tournament scenario where Mapeza did not extend selection to many of the foreign-based players who had reported for duty.
He did not seem to care about combinations or even seeing the potential and chose to fight for the silverware with trusted players.
But it is clear he would have experimented with the many news faces that came for the friendly tournament had he been guaranteed the Warriors job beyond that trip. It was even more chaotic ahead of the World Cup qualifiers against South Africa and Lesotho as Tapera was only given the job in the week of the matches.
And the eventual appointment of Nees is a good development for Zimbabwean football although concerns are already there with regards the time he has to come up with a winning team.
And given players are notified well in advance, chances are Nees had little input on who constitutes the squad for the upcoming matches in Uganda.
However, Nees claims he has enough information on the Zimbabwean players including those playing on the domestic scene.
We just hope he had an independent view of the squad in the absence of assistant coaches.
And it is also important that Nees told the national yesterday that he will stay clear of the alleged cartels that reportedly influence player selection for the Warriors.
We hope that will remain the case and Zimbabwe will be represented by deserving players at any given time.
We hereby wish Mr Nees a successful rein with the Warriors starting with the matches against Kenya and Cameroon.
Online Reporter