adminTalking Football with Cosmas Zulu
BETWEEN 1981 and 1982 Highlanders were not doing well because most members of the squad were getting to the end of their careers with an average age of over 30. So in 1993 we got a Scottish coach by the name Bobby Clark. He was a Godsend as he planted the seed of success for the next 25 years to come. What he did was to begin a junior policy which started in the same year by promoting more than 12 Under-18 junior players to the first team. These were the likes of the late Nhamo Shambira, Netsai Moyo, Mercedes Sibanda, Summer Ncube, Willard Khumalo just to mention a few. We did struggle for the better part of the season but in the last 15 games of the season we were now a machine.
I was understudying Clark during that year and after he left Ali Dube, the man who was working with these juniors, was now an expert on how to bring players into the system.
In 1984 Barry Daka, Lawrence Phiri and myself continued with this junior policy to 1990 when we were Cup Kings and won the championship. After seven years the team we had built was now ageing.
Behind closed doors Ali Dube and I in 1987 took the Under-18 players to Aberdeen in Scotland for a tournament which we won after competing against 14 countries.
The players we took there were the likes of the late Adam Ndlovu, the late Nqobizitha Maenzanise, Abraham Mbambo, the late Makheyi Nyathi, Nkululeko Dlodlo, Sydney Zimunya and the late Ronnie Jowa. We were already building the team for the 1990s which won the 1993 championship.
In 1993 we again started to build a team for the turn of the century with the likes of Thulani “Biya” Ncube, Master Masiku and Siza Khoza. We won the Castle juniors’ trophy with these boys in 1993. These are the boys who went on to win the championships successively between1998-2002.
I am saying over those years it was the junior policy which brought success to Highlanders.
Money doesn’t always buy success. It’s a question of blending. I am challenging the present administrators, players and technical staff to win the championship and trophies and prove me wrong.
The idea of a perfect team
To play to the system demands individual talents to fit into it and play collectively, to play with each other, for each other, to take and give passes every week. You want players who are conditioned to the system and have adaptability, having your players to be prepared to run all day and run into position. The great teams have character. It goes beyond skill or work rate, some of the great teams lack it.
And advice to goalkeeper coaches — the best goalkeepers are not those who can often be brilliant but those who make the fewest mistakes.
Physio-team doctor
The small man in a tracksuit who sprints with a kit bag whenever one of his team’s players goes down injured or just wants a word of re-assurance from a father figure, does absolutely nothing else all week except to sprint on with the magic bag when one of his side’s players gets hurt. When he gets to the players much groaning takes place on the part of the boy and much rubbing of the thighs supporting of shoulders and asking “are you alright lad?”
Did you know?
Sir Stanley Matthews played football until he was 50 years old in 1965.
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