Online Reporter
ZIFA finally swallowed their pride on Wednesday when they fired Michael Nees from his job as Warriors coach.
It ended the German coach’s 15-month stay as Warriors coach in which the team won just two of the 16 matches in which he was in charge.
Those two wins came against Namibia in the 2025 AFCON qualifiers.
Nees will record in his CV that he guided the Warriors to the 2025 Nations Cup finals but what it will not record is that he only beat one team, Namibia, to do that.
He won’t be among the coaches who will be in Morocco after ZIFA finally bowed down to pressure and axed him.
It’s quite clear, reading from the reaction on social media, that the dismissal of Nees is something that has been welcomed by most of the Warriors fans.
Nees’ popularity started plunging when it became clear that he wasn’t adding any value to the Warriors and there was nothing to suggest that he would make the team better and more competitive.
The team was still playing at the same level they were playing when they were under the guidance of local coaches.
In fact, some even argue that the team’s performance levels were getting worse.
This is despite the fact that a number of young, talented and ambitious players have emerged on the scene.
We have seen the emergence of the likes of Tawanda Maswanhise, Tawanda Chirewa and Bill Antonio and they all represent the fresh crop of talented youngsters who have the capacity to transform our attack.
Nees appeared reluctant to trust the talents of these young players and it was clear that he had a personal issue against Chirewa.
The two fell out when the Wolves forward reacted angrily to the coach’s decision to substitute him in one match.
Nees took it personally and felt that the young forward had undermined his authority and from there their relationship was never the same.
We also wonder what Nees was seeing in some of the players which he had converted into regular members of his team.
He appeared to have turned the national team into a club where some of the players had permanent places and would still be called irrespective of their form. But, more than anything else, what is clear is that Nees was out of depth at this level of the game.
This is a coach who had won just three AFCON or World Cup qualifiers at his previous posts before he was somehow recruited to come and coach the Warriors. We believe that Lincoln Mutasa and his ZIFA executive, who made the bizarre decision to employ Nees, need to explain to the nation how they ended up coming up with such a strange move.
They need to tell us how they ended up settling for a man with just three wins under his belt.
These questions need to be answered.
As long as it’s the same Warriors, no coach under the sun can redeem us. As a footballing nation, we are as bad as they come. Reminder; we lost to Somalia. Nees was not there. We lost to Eswatini, Nees was not there. We lost to the Seychelles, Nees was the opposite coach, we lost to Botswana, Nees was not there. We then lost to Lesotho under Nees but we also held Nigeria and South Africa to a draw under Nees. So if one wants to be fair, coaches are not to blame. We are just a bad footballing nation!