Gorowa wants victory

Augustine Hwata Senior Sports Reporter
AS the Warriors march into Rufaro tomorrow for a 2014 World Cup campaign, coach Ian Gorowa has challenged his charges to fight two battles from one front and emerge victorious from both ends. Zimbabwe and Mozambique are out of the reckoning for the World Cup but Gorowa and his opposite number Joao Chissano have dressed the dead rubber match as a “high profile international friendly”.

Mozambique are currently lying third in Group G with two points while Zimbabwe have just a single point after five matches.
Guinea are second as Egypt have wrapped the pool before the final qualifier.

Gorowa took over the Warriors when the wheels on the wagon had completely come off after Rahman Gumbo started as navigator before he passed to Klaus Dieter Pagels.

Pagels failed to rescue the sinking ship and for Gorowa the mission of trying to qualify for the World Cup is like flogging a dead horse in a race and hoping it not only to finish but also to win.

But while he cannot repair the damage already inflicted on the Warriors campaign, Gorowa said he would like to avoid the ignominy of being part of a group of coaches who failed to help the Zimbabwean team to win even a single World Cup qualifier.

So from one front Gorowa, wants his players to try and impress him as he builds a team for the CHAN finals next year while from the other end he wants them to get a victory over Mozambique at all costs.

“To be honest we have not won in this group and I do not want to take responsibility for something when I was not in charge.
“In this game we have to play for our pride as Zimbabweans and have to win at home, which is very important.

“Also, we have to look at the performance of some of the players whom we have not used as a technical team and we need to access them so I think it’s important to get both results and performance,” said Gorowa.

It will be an ideal world for Gorowa to get both a result and performance but the coach said his preparations for this game were badly affected. “We are very serious at getting a win from this game despite the technical problems that happened during the week when league games were played on Wednesday and Thursday and that disrupted our plans for training.

“So we failed to train and that sort of dampened our spirits because we had a little bit of spanners in the work, in terms of trying to prepare. “However, it’s very rare to get an international friendly so we are trying use this game as one of those preparations for the CHAN finals.

“Personally, I am not happy with the preparations and there is nothing we can do but we have to solider on and get a good result,” said Gorowa.

The players reported for duty at their clubs on Wednesday and joined camp on Thursday and yesterday was the beginning of a full squad’s training.

Gorowa has selected locally-based players while Kaizer Chief’s Willard Katsande is the only foreign ― based player and Devon Chafa serves a 30-day provisional suspension for testing positive to a prohibited substance during the last World Cup qualifier in June.

On Tuesday, Gorowa will pick another team to play South Africa in friendly at Orlando Stadium but his immediate focus is on the game tomorrow.

“I can cry and cry and cry (about preparations) but it seems nobody is listening and there is nothing we can do now.
“It’s something we can spend the whole day talking about but the bottom line is that the preparations were not good. “Maybe, we need to sit down and discuss with all the people involved in running football and see if we can come up with a better solution.

“I think when I was appointed, the first aim was to try and get to CHAN and we have achieved that and the longer term is to get to the 2015 African Cup of Nations.

“But if we have such kind of situations where we have players two days before the games, then it means it will not be easy but the reason why we wanted to qualify for CHAN is to give exposure to the players in international football so that we access them when we play in the more prestigious competitions,” he said.

While Gorowa is fuming over the poor preparations, Chissano, who brought two foreign-based players in his squad had been training his lads since last month.

“And we are playing against a team that has been in camp since August 20 and had even set up a mini training camp in South Africa and if you ask me if we are better prepared than Mozambique, then say I don’t think so.

“But what we are riding on right now in the experience that we have because we had most of the players before and also it’s an opportunity for us to give exposure to the other players and see where they stand in terms of international competition.

“We had a core group that played in the matches against Mauritius and Zambia but now we can use other players,” he said.
Before the CHAN match against Zambia in August, Gorowa also faced the same problem when his training programme was interrupted
“We will have to talk to the players to take this game seriously, besides that we are playing at home and would like to win.

“We have never won at home (since he took over) but we have not lost a game so it’s a process as we are building a team.
“There is something that comes within the players when we are playing at home and I think it’s the pressure of the home crowd.

“So, we will try to win but I do not want to put pressure on the guys that they have to win because for me it’s also about the performance but we have to play for our pride so that we do not get the record of having failed to win a World Cup qualifier. “We do not want that record as a nation, so we will try to win and avoid finishing at the bottom of the log.

“Sometimes you win when playing so badly and sometimes you perform well and lose. We know how Mozambique plays and we will try to make changes to suit the game,” he said.

Chissano has accepted the underdogs tag.
“We are playing Zimbabwe who have better chances at home but will try our best.

I brought all the players who were in Angola and then added two from the South African league,” said Chissano.

Mozambique’s aces in the pack should be Pelembe from Mamelodi Sundowns and Ernesto from Ajax Cape Town while their skipper plays for Costa Dol Sol alongside former Dynamos midfielder David Shoko.