adminan act of madness on the part of the players and the whole technical department as loyal fans start to question the capabilities of all and sundry.
The blame game and rumour mill as expected will intensify but the manner in which we deal with the aftermath of this disaster, the intelligence of analysing what went wrong and the symptoms of the malaise in our national game and seek to soberly adopt corrective measures.
As a soccer-loving nation, we are saddened with this poor showing from our national team, lack of basic coaching skills on the part of the national coaches and the general fabric of our football curriculum countrywide.
National coach Rahman Gumbo must shoulder most of the blame because our hopes as a nation had been raised high, eleventh hour fund-raising and donations exceeding targets, to repay all those efforts and patriotism with a poor display as witnessed in Luanda is low of the lowest.
Any Uefa “B” trainee or practising coach will tell you that the syllabus of this course is dominated by defending topics such as Defending from wide areas, Defending when outnumbered, Defending in and around the penalty area, Defending set-pieces, High line defending, Defending deep, etc.
Our coach had no other alternative except to work studiously covering most of the above mentioned topics in training while preparing for the Angola game.
Gumbo should have “parked the bus” in front of goal, period.
Italians and Germans are the most highly accomplished defensive strategists in modern football because they have made basic defending a skill, watching great players like Paulo Maldini, Cannavaro, Franco Baresi and Franz Beckenbeur, Lotthar Mattheaus and Mattheaus Sammer, one is left without any doubt that they deal with defending as part of the broader game with great care and patience.
The Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho comes to mind, he is a passionate and charismatic defending gaffer who thrives in such similar circumstances and I bet he would have done exactly the same thing — defend deep, defend from wide areas, defend set-pieces with good height and in numbers, defending when out-numbered and hit the opponents on the break with explosive players like Samuel Eto or Didier Drogba.
Any coaching manual out there will simply highlight one honest truth about football, “You build from the back first”, in a more progressive approach one could use the old adage, “Build your house on solid foundations”.
Our loathing and cursing is aptly fuelled by the common knowledge that in Zimbabwe we do have the talent to have gone through without any demise, the players that we have currently are capable to play at that level and do a decent job.
As a practising coach who works with a lot of junior players in grassroots leagues and set-ups in the UK, I strongly feel that our national game has suffered a lot over the years and what we are witnessing is a harbinger of worse things to come.
Our criticism of the national coach, Zifa, players and administrators should be based on our short sightedness and lack of professionalism as we all wonder how low we can sink.
One common benchmark in modern football is that in any given country, their football pedigree is as good as its grassroots, by just looking at the Brazilians and most South American countries, one is left with no doubt that their grassroots leagues and set-ups are very vibrant and competitive.
My memories of our once active grassroots can only be described with the mentioning of very few characters who had the love of the game at heart — CAPS United junior team coach, the late Alois Patsika, Bowers at Arcadia United, Majuta Mpofu at Eagles, Black Aces’ junior team coach the late Charles “Dhissa” Mandizvidza and Highlanders’ Ali Baba.
Since all these coaches left the football scene nothing has been done on a serious note by the respective clubs, their communities and Zifa to replace such great coaches.
It seems to me that the only club that has at least endeavoured to equate their past master is none other than Aces Youth Academy who are being coached by Ecki Madzivanzira.
By taking a cursory look on the work that he has and still does, Knowledge Musona, Khama Billiart, Lloyd Zvasiya and Munya Mbanje of Leeds United just to mention a few, it is not accidental that we simply barking the wrong tree by continuously recycling the same untrained coaches who only thrive by handing out their former playing career CV as qualifications of coaching.
Most young Zimbabweans who are playing over here in different professional Academies and League football have shown interest in playing for their national team but due to the non-availability of dual citizenship, it has been impossible to get even a single player.
I checked with the Zifa technical director Nelson Matongorere and he explained to me in detail about the procedure that is in place, and out of 10 players who were willing to come and represent Zimbabwe they all found it difficult to renounce their status over here in the UK.
Last two weeks as I was watching the Women Under-17 World Cup tournament in Azerbaijan, I was impressed with the Ghanaian team which reached the semi-finals and lost to France.
Their head coach is based in the UK and mostly works with a top academy that allows him to do a lot of international and grassroots programmes.
He works with the Ghana FA in the National Youth Teams and acts as their UK representative over scouting, football diplomatic relations and furthering their professionalism through continuous development.
Their systems are miles ahead of us and I don’t see ourselves competing with them overnight unless if we change tact and create our own networks of people who are involved with football in countries that have good leagues.
Qualifying for World Cup tournaments in Ghana has become a reality and yet we still struggle to imagine ourselves qualifying for African Cup of Nations.
Zifa needs to broaden their programmes and start to engage with Zimbabweans abroad who are actively involved in football.
l Phillip Zulu is a Zimbabwean coach who is based in the UK where he is heavily involved in coaching and grooming young players.
Online Reporter