daniel chigunwePhillip Zulu
Special Correspondent
JUNIOR football development revival is in the air, as the ZIFA interim president Gift Banda trumpets loudly and boldly to the nation at large that we have to build our football on the bedrock of intensive junior structures.
Something so rare, yet so real that we hear of junior football development as a long-term solution to our failed football state.
It was a taboo to hear of such sweet music to the ears that reviving our junior policy is the key to the future stability, progression and growth of our national teams.
The interim ZIFA president Banda has been unflinching about going back to the basics, his maiden speech reminded the football fraternity our problems and demons, should be visualised in the junior prism.
What’s the interim ZIFA president “smoking?’’ One may be bound to ask, as the junior pronouncement is objectively hoisted highest at a time when some senior national team players had become a subject of ridicule and scorn as the bloated, aging players, above 28 years old took centre stage.
It had become the norm to witness newly-capped players aged 28-years-old making their debuts, then one wonders what Banda is “smoking?’’ So rare, yet so true and uplifting to see a former club owner who trumpets about junior football development as someone so obsessed with his passion of the most beautiful game as he jigsaw puzzles the fans whether they still fondly remember the 17-year-old explosive gifted young Peter Ndlovu whose exploits tore top English Premiership defences into shreds.
At 17 years of age we exported one of the best and first African professional footballer in the then new English Premiership League in 1991. Such a great achievement for the country and Africa at large, has been overshadowed by some football dystopian approach that focused on the retention and rotation of the 28-year-olds, who had reached their peak of zero development.
These are the tremors that shook the very pillars of our national football structures, as standards went up in smoke and smouldering as we are ranked 120 plus in the world.
How can we forget Moses Chunga? His presence at Dynamos impacted positively in the local championship titles, the senior national team and continental clashes with top African Championship giants such as Zamalek of Egypt, until his departure to Belgium.
Both players (Ndlovu and Chunga) are products of the junior club and national team football. The leadership then believed in serious junior football development programmes throughout the whole country.
Highlanders, CAPS United, Dynamos, Zimbabwe Saints, Black Aces and many clubs had a thriving junior policy that supplied their first teams with products from their structures below. Most of our players during the famed “Dream Team’’ era had their roots in strong junior development programmes. Every top club or nation in world football underpins their future progress and growth on an intensive junior development process that continuously undergoes comprehensive realignment in terms of new coaching philosophies that broaden their curriculum.
Brazil and Germany are good examples of nations that build their structures on the rocks, whilst Barcelona and Chelsea have gone a step further and ahead of most clubs as they produce world class players from their academies and youth structures.
The junior development programmes in UK are constantly improving in terms of coaching methods, curricular designs and player base quality, as more youngsters from Zimbabwe and other African nations impress in the English Premiership academies where more than 15 Zimbabweans are signed up in all tiers of the professional football. Junior football is in the AIR and it’s the way to go!
Online Reporter