adminTalking football with Cosmas Zulu
DEAR spectators, you are the owners of the game. Without you at stadia, there would be no electric atmosphere to talk about. Players need you the 12th man, they need your singing, clapping for 90 minutes whether the team is losing or winning. The arms of the law enjoy looking after your safety, vendors look forward to seeing you every weekend, soccer administrators smile to the banks because of you.
Coaches – much teaching and coaching is based on the misguided notion that practice makes perfect, this is not necessarily so. Practice makes permanent and that fact applied with equal certainty to both good and bad practice. Incorrect practice will eventually produce permanent bad habits. This fundamental truth is required to be understood.
Those who believe in coaching understand the benefits which will accrue from correct practice and the formation of good habits and sound knowledge. Those coaches who do not understand this basic truth have no basis for belief. So coaches, spectators, soccer officials and players this beautiful game will not be played if there are no referees to officiate on the day so these gentlemen and women need our 300 percent support, they are part of the game.
I can tell you a story which I witnessed some years ago. An old cyclist was knocked down by a car at an intersection. When the traffic police got to the scene they asked the motorist what happened. The motorist said the old man did not give me my way as I was coming from his right. The old man shouted to the policeman “Hai hai mfana wami ngiyakuzwa sibili, ukhuluma iqiniso kodwa angi-wrongo.”
He was taken to hospital refusing to accept that he was not familiar with road rules and had never read the Highway Code.
Zifa, PSL must find a sponsor to come up with laws of the game booklets to sell to the soccer fraternity to understand and be familiar with the laws of the game. With this I am sure the next 10 years to come our problems will be solved, where spectators, officials, coaches, players blame the referees when they lose and fail to see that they did not shoot enough at goal or defence was so poor to mark opponents tight in the box.
Back to the pitch
It is therefore self evident that we are not born with equal talents and that we do not have equal opportunities. The great challenge of teaching however is to recognise potential talent and develop that potential to its full realisation, the other misguided notion to which reference should be made is that technique practised in isolation cannot be transferred into the game, if a player is a poor technical performer in a situation where he has no opposing player then there is nothing of technical merit to transfer into the game.
It should however, be understood that the player who is technically proficient without an opposing player will necessarily be proficient when opposing and co-operating players are brought into the practice. Important is the attitude towards learning by both the coach and the player. This attitude should be characterised by two qualities.
1) Open mind
2) An enquiring mind
Lose honourably and win honourably.
Until next week.
Online Reporter