adminTalking football with Cosmas Zulu
PLEASE the Highlanders family, the team has only played five off-season games. Give the coaches enough time to build combinations. With eight new players, it’s not going to be a two-month job. It’s going to take a little longer. I have said it in my last columns that give the coaches a long rope to hang themselves. After saying this I do have advice to the coaches and players at Highlanders why I and my fellow coaches Barry Daka and Lawrence Phiri won everything during our time with the great club.
What is your ambition?
I suppose I have had as many wonderful moments as any player or coach who has worn the black and white jersey of Highlanders, but when I asked what my ambition for the future was, I always gave the same answer, to go on playing or coaching Highlanders and for the team to do well.
The way I figure it, what’s good for Barry Daka and Lawrance Phiri is good for Highlanders and what’s good for Highlanders is good for Barry Daka, Lawrence Phiri as well.
By the way we used to beat Dynamos in Harare and Bulawayo. Until you do that you are not going down in history as one of the greatest Highlanders squads. Please prove us wrong magents!!
What makes a good player?
It is a lot harder to write a chapter under this heading now than it was 30 years ago. Then the game was a lot more rigid. Defenders came in a set style with more or less the same attributes and the same went for half backs and forwards. They all had distinct styles and separate jobs. Now the game is more fluid and except for goalkeepers, every player has to be competent in every position.
If you watch Barcelona play, you will notice that when they are under pressure, everybody becomes a defender and is back helping out. When they are attacking, everybody moves upfield pushing and probing.
This is not to say that the modern game calls for players to rush blindly from one end of the field to the other after the ball, but simply in every match situation that arises every outfield player has a role to play and contribute, every player needs to have skill strength, determination, fitness, mobility and speed.
If you have all these attributes, you have to realise that they have assets and defects; things they do badly and things they do well. Perhaps the most important thing for any aspiring player is to polish his strengths to improve his weaknesses.
In my own case my assets as a player were the ability to run hard and shoot hard. These things I practised until they were outstanding features of my game hence I was nicknamed “Thunderboots.”
My defects were failing to shoot hard with my left leg, but looking back now I realise that if I had discovered my defects earlier, I could have resolved them and developed my game.
That is what I am asking you to do as soon as you can. Look at your game, what is good and bad about it and start polishing or practising your skills accordingly for there isn’t a perfect player in the world. Aah I don’t know about Lionel Messi!
Accepting this and accepting the fact that today’s player needs to be as versatile as he is skilled, I think the following ingredients are those that go to make a good or even a great player. I call them the six Cs:
- Concentration – both in training and during the game. It’s so easy to make mistakes but less likely if you concentrate.
- Consistency – speaks for itself – play well week in, week out, become the difference between good and the great player.
- Confidence – you have to believe in your ability even when the inevitable bad game or bad run occurs. Face up to mistakes and learn from them so that you are less likely to make them again.
- Courage – by courage I don’t mean raw or reckless bravery in diving at someone’s feet but the courage to put yourself in dangerous situations to turn half chances into goals and also to face up to mistakes and admit them and therefore improve as a result of them.
- Composure – the ability to keep cool under all circumstances whether it be a nerve wracking match situation or some form of provocation. You could see it in the late William Sibanda of Zimbabwe Saints FC and Billy Sibanda of Highlanders FC who when the situation got tense, the calmer they became and raised their game.
- Competitiveness – A player must want to play and to compete, he must want to get the ball in a 50-50 tackle and must want to be the first man to the ball in a crowded area.
Until next week . . .
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