adminLimukani Ncube Off the ball
The English football premiership season has started and for Arsenal fans like me, it seems the winter season has been extended. In short, torture continues.After Arsenal lost the opening game of the season with no major new signing, the world erupted to scold Arsenal bosses for failure to cope with big guns in European football on the market, and even if the London side started the Champions League qualifier mid-week well, many still believe they need more fire power to compete for honours.
The Daily Mail wrote this week “(Manager Arsene) Wenger believes in the scientific principles established at the Emirates, although his team of scouts around the world still work to the formula he brought with him in 1996. His scouting team, headed by Steve Rowley, are asked to identify players with three distinctive characteristics: pace, power and football intelligence.
If only they had added a fourth — the mentality of champions — they really would be in business.
“The dynamic training-ground environment, which was once the envy of the world when Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp and Robert Pires were pushing each other to reach new targets each day, has slowly been eroded. Wenger has too much power — given the freedom of the football club because of his achievements at Highbury.
There he won three Barclays Premier League titles, four FA Cups and took Arsenal to within a whisker of beating Barcelona at the Stade de France in 2006 (Champions League final). He knows the inner workings of every area of the club, which is rare in the modern game.”
And can you believe this? “Wenger’s detailed knowledge of every player’s contract even created an issue when Oxlade-Chamberlain was making substitute appearances for Arsenal last season. Written into the England winger’s deal is a clause stating that Arsenal must pay his former club Southampton £10 000 every time Oxlade-Chamberlain appears for more than 20 minutes.
Incredibly a trend emerged, with Wenger bringing him off the bench after 72 minutes (v Stoke), 73 minutes (Liverpool), 72 minutes (Coventry), 65 minutes (Norwich), 76 minutes (Fulham), 86 minutes (Tottenham), 67 minutes (Swansea), 73 minutes (West Ham), 71 minutes (Swansea), and 75 minutes (Reading).
“Arsenal’s accounts department were stunned to receive an email from Southampton demanding payment for the appearances, with the south coast club justifying their argument based on stoppage time. Eventually Arsenal agreed to pay for the appearances and the story worked its way around the offices at the Emirates with bafflement among staff.
They know Wenger calls the shots, but he is slow to move for targets.”
On the local front, those who follow Highlanders are also wondering what has hit them. They are wondering what has gone wrong in the team that promised so much last season, going for 23 games unbeaten and only losing the title by goal difference to eventual champions Dynamos.
That was how good they were and that is how much they promised as the new season began.
But things are no longer the same and the team can even lose a game to How Mine and life goes on. Fans have been exchanging harsh words on different platforms with some blaming manager Willard Mashinkila Khumalo. They have accused him of interfering with head coach, Kelvin Kaindu’s team selection, something which the coach and club chairman Peter Dube have denied.
Amos Zingwe Simba a club fan wrote on facebook “Very painful to hear all those stories flying at my beloved team this KK/Mawi feud if it’s very true. I would suggest KK leave the post to the so-called legends because from the stories coming I don’t see him succeeding here.
The guy is such an innocent hard working guy it will be bad to tarnish his name like this because the buck stops at his feet.”
A football analyst, Lee Mangena, came in with a different dimension; “Why do people think it’s Mawi who is the problem each time the team loses, you love the coach so much that he can’t be wrong, right?”
Bosso chairman Dube told the media that he was not aware of the rift in the technical department, adding that it would be futile to comment on what is posted on social networks.
“I have not heard of that issue. I can not be entertaining posts from social media by people who can not be identified. Everybody has a platform… All we need to do is to pick ourselves up and move forward. Teams are stronger this year”.
He said the coach and manager’s job descriptions were clear and no one influences the other.
“When we win, everybody smiles and when we lose, it becomes a blame game. When it comes to collective work, we need to be very careful. We have just been unlucky and no one is sabotaging deliberately. The call by some people that we should interview individuals one by one will be tantamount to witch-hunting.”
While the Highlanders family members are still at each other’s throats on why the team has gone for up to six games winning less than half of those, an outsider, Gibson Homela, who is a member of the Zifa High performance technical committee, chairman of Zimbabwe Saints and former coach of the national team, believes the hullabaloo about Khumalo is just nonsense.
Homela said what football fans must analyse is the quality of material at the coach’s disposal, adding that 99 percent of the team’s performance depends on the quality of players.
“I think people are hiding behind a finger and I think they are not being fair to Willard. The issue here is that people are not analysing the shortcomings of the players and I have noted that after some time, the team dies down as the league progresses, which points to physical shortcomings. This is then compounded by the quality that is there in the team.”
Homela noted three key factors when analysing players. Physical preparedness, technical preparedness and mental preparedness.
“As long as players come short in those key factors, they will always fail to deliver and that is what serious football people should be worrying about, not to be looking at individuals in the technical department because each person there has a specific duty.
I am not part of Highlanders, but this is my contribution to football,” said Homela.
The issue of the quality of players in the Premiership has also become topical at national team level, after the locally-based squad struggled against Mauritius and settled for a goalless draw against Zambia at home on Sunday. They are in Zambia this weekend for the return leg of the final qualifier of the 2014 Chan finals but already, journalists and fans alike are already questioning the calibre of players in the squad, compared to the yester year national teams.
Highlanders might be having five players in the national team: goalkeeper Tichaona Diya, Masimba Mambare, Peter Moyo, Milton Ncube and Bruce Kangwa, but they often come short in the local league, going for a long barren spell with no single individual to rise above the rest and conjure some magic, a clear indication that the team lacks a talisman.
The local league resumes next week and perhaps Kaindu and his boys will have rediscovered the form that made their fans believe in Highlanders again.
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Online Reporter