IT’S A CLASSIC TALE TOLD BY A FOOL

Sharuko on Saturday

MICHAEL Nees is gone — the end of the road for a snake oil salesman masquerading as a football coach, a plumber who dressed himself in the borrowed robes of a professional gaffer.

It was a horrible experiment, a suicidal gamble, a manifestation of the madness which has been the common denominator in the way our football has been governed for decades.

Nees leaves as the worst German coach to take charge of our Warriors and one of the worst four coaches to ever get that privilege.

All four are foreigners — Nees, Zdravko Logarusic of Croatia, Valinhos of Brazil and Rudi Gutendorf of Germany.

Zdravko Logarusic

Ironically, it was 30 years ago when we were first introduced to Gutendorf, who was already a pensioner looking for some sunny places to spend the remainder of his years and somehow fooled the ZIFA bosses into giving him a job.

That he failed was as expected as it was comical — his decision to spend most of his time undermining and mocking Gibson Homela, instead of simply doing his job, a reminder that he was detached from reality.

The tragedy for us is that the men and women we trust with the authority to run our national game, and appoint these coaches don’t seem to learn anything from their monumental mistakes.

And, in the three decades that have passed between the Gutendorf and Nees experiments, which all ended badly, our football leaders appear to have learnt absolutely nothing.

Let’s just take the last three foreign coaches who have been hired to take charge of the Warriors in the past 17 years — Valinhos, Loga and Nees.

None of them arrived here with the pedigree of having coached a decent national side in Africa.

Valinhos arrived here after coaching Fluminense Under-16, Vasco Da Gama Under-20, Al Ahli, Al Wasl, Botafogo, Flamengo and the Brazil Under-17 and Under-20 sides.

It was very clear that he lacked the experience which is needed to negotiate the tough jungles of African football which present a different challenge to coaching junior sides in Brazil.

Loga arrived here after coaching clubs in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and Angola with his only dance with a national side having come against Sudan and, somehow, Felton Kamambo and his colleagues deemed him good enough to coach the Warriors.

These are the same football leaders who closed the door on Bruce Grobbelaar.

Somehow, they chose a man whose highlight in his career was coaching the same Sudanese side which the Jungleman thrashed 3-0 on the only occasion he was given a chance to coach the Warriors.

For Kamambo and his crew, a coach who had taken charge of Ghanaian clubs — King Faisal Babes, Ashanti Gold and Asante Kotoko — Kenyan club Gor Mahia, Tanzanian club Simba SC and Angolan club Interclube was deemed the best man who could guide the Warriors.

So, when they eventually fired him, just check where he went and, predictably, failed — Al-Batin and Al-Tai in Saudi Arabia, back to his Kenyan comfort zone with Police FC and a stint with Eswatini.

DOING THE SAME THING, EXPECTING DIFFERENT RESULTS

Then came Lincoln Mutasa and his so-called normalisation team.

To them, a coach whose CV showed that he had taken charge of Seychelles and Rwanda in failed experiments and is one of the few coaches to lose a game to Eritrea, who are not even ranked by FIFA, was the best man to take charge of the Warriors.

Nees’ CV also showed that he has coached the Israel Under-21 and Kosovo Under-21 teams.

And, that too, proved impressive and irresistible for Mutasa, and even though his CV showed that he had only three wins on the continent in charge of his two previous teams, they still deemed he was the best man for the job.

The good thing about football is that it always exposes incompetence — whether it’s the case of some plumbers, like Nees, trying to hoodwink nations that they are proper coaches, or some fly-by-night administrators trying to deceive countries that they are the best chaps for the job.

It’s all about results and, for coaches, like a company CEO, it all boils down to the figures on the table — profit and loss, top line and bottom line, stuff like that.

I think our main challenge as a nation is that we have been putting a lot of focus on the coaches rather than the men and women who are hiring these incompetent coaches and that is why these mistakes keep being repeated.

No one is taking Kamambo to task for bringing in Loga and asking tough questions as to why they settled for that Croatian plumber who was masquerading as a coach?

Was there any financial inducement for Loga to be employed for the benefit of those who employed him, and if that was not the case then why did they end up settling for such a hopeless man?

The same questions should also be asked when it comes to Nees’ recruitment because these ZIFA bosses are running the association on behalf of the people of this country, and they should be held accountable for their monumental blunders.

They should know that there are consequences to their actions.

And, maybe, the time has come for the SRC to have a clause that says that any ZIFA board which hires a Mickey Mouse coach will have its members banned from football administration if their experiment fails.

We can’t have three different ZIFA boards making the same “mistake” in a period spread over 17 years and all of them getting away with it when their kamikaze choices betrayed a nation.

For me, these are not mistakes, there is something behind the scenes which we are yet to know and I tend to agree with those who say that the agents of some of these Mickey Mouse coaches pay some administrators for their clients to get this big job.

IT’S A TALE TOLD BY A FOOL

Valinhos beat just ONE opponent in the 10 matches that he was in charge of the Warriors when his men defeated Namibia 2-0 at Rufaro.

Loga beat just ONE opponent during his time when he was in charge of the Warriors when his men edged Botswana 1-0 in Francistown.

Nees beat just ONE opponent during his time when he was in charge of the Warriors when his men defeated Namibia in back-to-back matches.

So, basically, what this means is that the tens of thousands of dollars that we have pumped into these three coaches was a 17-year investment to ensure that we beat Botswana and Namibia.

We had to recruit coaches from Brazil, Croatia and Germany all in the name of beating Botswana and Namibia.

We had to endure the humiliation of being barred from the World Cup qualifiers because we failed to settle a US$160,000 debt owed to a coach who was only good enough to beat Namibia at Rufaro.

We have just fired a coach, whom we are going to pay a handsome amount in compensation, who doesn’t have a win in the last 12 months of action.

Nees’ last victory was a 3-1 win over Namibia in Johannesburg on October 14, 2024, and this means that a full year has passed since he last picked a victory as a coach.

In the eight games his Warriors played since that win over Namibia, his team drew four and lost four and we must be the only country in the world which was still finding hope in a coach who is winless in 12 months.

Nees’ Warriors failed to score in their last four games — a 0-1 defeat to Rwanda, a 0-1 defeat to Benin, a 0-1 defeat to Lesotho and a goalless draw against South Africa – and, to our football leaders, this was still all good.

The problem for me is not Nees, it’s not Loga and it’s not Valinhos.

Valinhos

These men did not impose themselves to become Warriors coaches, they simply applied for a job, showed their credentials and won the tender to become the coaches.

The problem lies with the people who employed them even when it was clear that there were a lot of red flags which showed that these men were not suitable for the job.

The only time we topped our table in the AFCON qualifying phases was ahead of the 2019 Nations Cup finals.

We were under the guidance of a local coach, Sunday Chidzambwa, and we even went to Kinshasa and beat the DRC in their backyard.

The ZIFA bosses who took over after Sunday had taken his Warriors to the 2019 AFCON finals decided to replace him with Loga.

They didn’t pay Sunday all his dues and they even went on to pay Loga three times what they were paying Mhofu with other perks like holidays for the Croat to enjoy his time on sunny beaches around the world.

But results don’t lie.

The Croat was win-less in his last seven games and Nees has been win-less in his last eight games.

Combined, the two coaches were win-less in their last 15 games.

Still, those who appointed them are not being taken to task to explain to the nation why they settled for them and why they dragged all of us into their mess.

To God Be The Glory

Peace to the GEPA Chief, the Big Fish, George Norton, Daily Service, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and all the Chakari-boys still in the struggle.

Come on Warriors!!!!!!!!!!!!

Khamaldinhoooooooooooo!

Text Feedback – +263772545199

WhatsApp – +263772545199

You can also interact with me on Twitter (@Chakariboy), Facebook, Instagram (sharukor)