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Ngqwele Dube, Sports Correspondent
ZIFA technical director, Wilson Mutekede has blamed poor preparations for the Young Warriors’ poor showing at this year’s Cosafa Under-17 Championships in Mauritius.
Mutekede added lack of a national league for that age group was a contributory factor.
“We need a national league that will allow ease of monitoring of the players by the coaches over a period of time.
“We also did not prepare well so that had an effect. We need to set up concrete development structures countrywide to widen the selection pool,” he said.
The side’s coach, Tafadzwa Mashiri had sounded alarm bells at the beginning of July airing concerns there was little activity to show they were heading for a prestigious tournament.
It was a case of same script but different cast as Zimbabwe’s under-17 team crushed out of the Cosafa Championships without winning a single match, a similar showing to last year’s performance.
This year the Young Warriors managed to score three goals while last year they only scored a single goal.
Zimbabwe played their last Group C match on Wednesday which they lost 1-2 to Angola but they had already been booted out of the tournament after two loses to Malawi and Swaziland.
The Young Warriors gave the nation hopes in their opening match when they narrowly lost to Swaziland 3-2 with the Swazis scoring their winning goal four minutes from time.
Zimbabwe had put up a memorable performance as they came from 2-0 down to level the scores two all before the Swazis grabbed the match in the dying minutes.
When all thought the Warriors were going to hold their own in the second match against Malawi, they crumbled like a deck of cards being handed a humiliating 5-0 loss.
Final Group C Standings
TEAM P W D L GF GA Pts
Angola (Q) 3 3 0 0 7 1 9
Malawi 3 2 0 1 6 1 6
Swaziland 3 1 0 2 3 7 3
Zimbabwe 3 0 0 3 3 10 0
Online Reporter