Online Reporter
THE Young Warriors poor performance at the COSAFA qualifiers for the CAF Under-17 championships and the Under-17 World Cup next year was simply unacceptable.
We all watched in horror as our boys struggled against Mozambique, losing the game 1-0, Abefore settling for a draw against Eswatini and then falling to a 2-3 defeat to the Comoros.
Given that all this was happening at home, it only helped amplify the pain.
In football, playing at home is supposed to give a team an advantage.
You have the backing of the home support and you are familiar with the conditions but we saw our boys struggle, instead of imposing themselves, in their three matches.
One point, out of a possible nine, was a very poor return.
The coach Thulani Sibanda chose to blame his players, accusing them of defending like schoolboys when that is exactly what they are given they are still under the age of 17.
The challenge wasn’t about how our boys defended but it was about how we approached this tournament as a nation. When you are a country which turns its youth teams into some sides who only become relevant when there is a tournament then you are applying the wrong formula.
The youth development programmes are the most important in football.
When you neglect them, as we have done for the better part of the last decade or so, then you are only courting trouble.
You are only setting yourselves up for the kind of failure that we saw with our Young Warriors in this COSAFA tournament.
Developing our youthful footballers should never be an event or something inspired by a tournament.
It should always be a continuous process.
We agree with some experts who say that results, in these age-group tournaments, are not the most important thing.
We agree with them that investing in the development processes is what is more important.
Unfortunately, for us, we don’t see that investment which is being poured into our junior football structures.
We had a very good project at the Aces Youth Soccer Academy and we should have invested a lot of money into it because it had shown its capacity to produce the kind of footballers who can make an impact on a senior national team level.
After all, this is the same project which gave us our Warriors stars like Khama Billiat and Knowledge Musona.
However, a lot of money which came from FIFA, which was supposed to be invested in our junior development structures, was not used for that and, in some cases, there is no explanation as to what it was used for. We need a complete review of how we approach junior development in our football.
It’s the lifeblood of our national game and it’s unfortunate that we are not giving it the attention that it deserves when it’s the goose that is supposed to lay the golden eggs.
