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Philip Zulu
Sports Correspondent
THE debate on our preparedness to return to international football has taken centre stage on various media platforms.
It has increasingly opened up a can of worms in our local football dilemma that has caused so much destruction in failing to formulate sustainable long-term based development programs that should produce good talents for our national teams.
Modern top flight professional football is premised on evolving trends in scientific, technical applications and continuous learning in robust coach education modules.
Our junior development approach is an outdated system that negates modernity in the renewal of well-organised systems that produce huge bases of talented youngsters periodically.
Once upon a time, we had Methembe Ndlovhu (Bantu Rovers), Ali Baba (Highlanders Youth & Academy), Kuda Muchemeyi (Dynamos Juniors), the late Alois Patsika (CAPS United Juniors), the late Charles ‘Dhisa’ Mandizvidza (Black Aces Youth & Juniors) and many other coaches out there who shaped the junior national development programs of producing young talents that progressed into top professional footballers locally, and abroad.
When the quality of football ‘coughs’, every structure ‘sneezes’ with mediocrity that can be witnessed in our local standards that are plunging deeper and deeper into oblivion.
These great men and coaches served the game so well, yet when it comes to national strategic plans for junior and youth football development, we hardly hear of their names or methods of coaching systems.
Every day, we witness a technical department that seeks to reinvent coaching, yet the previous achievements far outweigh the current farce and mediocrity in display.
Once we start to believe that our failures of developing the game are largely fuelled by lack of basic understanding, knowledge and application of the past experiences we had with the exploits of legends such as Moses Chunga, Peter Ndlovu, Benjamin Nkonjera, Vitalis Takawira, Willard Khumalo, Tobias Sibanda, Ernest Chirambadare, etc, and how we evolve as a nation in terms of broad based ideals on modern football development programs, then we have a decent chance of arresting the rot in the national association and grassroots formations.
A technical audit of the personnel employed by ZIFA, top positions of Technical Directorate, junior and youth national teams coaching, senior national team coaches and team management, should be enhanced at the earliest possible opportunity to lay down the LAW of how football works, measure one’s competency and relevance in the game.
The same apostles of football capture at our national federation are starting to come out of their shells making loud pronouncements on the Diaspora footballers and their impact on our national teams at this stage when our World Cup qualifying hopes rest in the presence of foreign-based players.
When football capture was intact, the very same faces were in cahoots of denying the likes of Jordan Zemura, then when he was 15 years old at Charlton Athletic Academy, Michael Ndiweni aged 16 (Newcastle United FC Academy), Tavonga Kuleya Gumbochuma aged 16 (Doncaster Rovers FC Academy), and many others, suddenly the new protagonists of foreign-based footballers is now their ‘oyster ‘ of daily lectures seeking relevance with the newly appointed board.
These double dipping apostles are only in the game to line their pockets and nothing in terms of contributing to positive junior and youth development programs locally or abroad.
In UK we started our junior development programs in 2003 as a small community of Africans in Leeds, using our own personal resources until this very day, then we produced players such as Munyaradzi Mbanje, Jimiel Chikukwa, Ethan Kachosa (ex- Leeds United Academy & U23), Tavonga Kuleya Gumbochuma ( Doncaster Rovers), Bolton Makwedza ( Rotherham United), Arnold Ndiweni ( Mansfield Town FC), Seth Patrick, Sharma Bako ( VFL Lubeck ), Craig Chikwana ( Bradford City Academy), Vincent Benni, Bethuel Makwedza ( Manchester City Academy Development).
This great foundation was made possible when we approached the then TD, Nelson Matongorere, in 2008 and I was appointed an International Scout for young Zimbabwean born talents in the UK and Europe (on voluntary basis with no payment) and, the very first youngster to appear on our radar was Tendayi Darikwa when he first signed for Chesterfield FC, aged 16.
I recommended him to the junior national teams through Matongorere. All our efforts were then, being supported and benchmarked by Technical Directorate (both Nelson Matongorere and Takaendesa Jongwe) that recognized our inputs of inviting Bradley Pritchard (Charlton Athletic), Macaulay Bonne ( Colchester United), David Moyo ( Northampton Town), Munyaradzi Mbanje ( Leeds United), L Moyo ( Sheffield Wednesday), with the latter TD ( Takaendesa Jongwe) being pivotal in fully recognising the foreign-based players coming back home to represent their country.
This journey took us so many years of hard work without any incentives coming from any quarters of the corporate world or individual well-wishers.
We struggled as parents who only wanted to help their kids to develop their abilities in a foreign country where the demands of the game are so high and intense.
But the obstacles that we faced after the departure of both TDs ( Matongorere & Jongwe) were terrifying as all these systems and pillars were outrightly ignored all of a sudden.
But they now sing tunes of canvassing for foreign-based players in their hymns of betrayal to the locals who have been left in the wilderness of mediocrity as the bar of seeking relevance is being raised higher and higher.
Yes, we have so many social media groups that claim to have initiated such a colossal task, but the open football truth is that the process of starting this adventure involved our late mentor ( ex-Arcadia United player, Charlie White), all the coaches who volunteered in the cold evenings and mornings to coach, pay for the league affiliations and expenses to the FA of England for the last 20 years.
These are the heroes of Zimbabwean Diaspora football development programs in nurturing junior talents without being paid.
They are shocked to witness a plethora of self-serving public statements in social and print media about the new preachers of foreign based footballers whom they have never known about, from their formative ages of 6-12 years, when serious junior football development takes place.
These latter-day saints should be exposed for their chicanery and deceit. They don’t even know of a single player aged 8-14 years, at this stage and yet, when the same boy is signed with professional academies, we hear loud noises of self-serving importance and personal glory.
That’s a clear hijacking agenda of professional work, done by coaches and less resourced parents who braved the extreme challenges of using meagre resources in UK grassroots county football leagues that range from £15 000+ per season to run a team (excluding the coaching fees for further continuous learning, loss of earnings, hire of indoor facilities during winter, match venues, referee fees, crippling finances, etc).
Ask anyone in the UK about pursuing a coaching course up to Uefa B and higher up, in terms of expenses, time, loss of earnings and the commitment required to sustain the thousand plus hours of unpaid servitude in the harsh cold winters of Europe and, they will easily present a thesis of a lifetime.
These revelations of deep servitude of developing young Africans (including Zimbabweans) in the Diaspora should be best managed, progressed, and pronounced by the protagonists who initiated the idea way back before 2008, those field workers who bear the full scars, stinking sweat and the dirt of the trenches that they dug in setting up structures of junior grassroots development programs in UK.
We ran more than four teams per season, and the financial tolls were immense and unbalancing at every turn as pockets ran dryer without any support or sponsorship.
Such hard-core experiences cannot be achieved by overwhelming exaggerations on social or print media platforms, but on hard graft, creativity in idea generation, total dedication and technical expertise (huge investment in professional course education programs), and long-term based goals.
■ Phillip Zulu is a former Arcadia United player-turned development coach. He writes in his personal capacity
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