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Phillip Zulu-Special Correspondent
THE current FIFA ban on all international football engagements by Zimbabwe brings forth an introspective analysis of our national team squad that participated in Cameroon during the delayed 2021 African Cup of Nations tournament in January this year.
The symptoms of football capture were all glaring and stratified by a group of players who were hovering over 26 years old in large numbers that defied the basics of football development at decent national levels.
That Alec Mudimu, Ishmael Wadi, Never Tigere, Kelvin Madzongwe, Bruce Kangwa, Onismor Bhasera, Thabani Kamusoko, Gerald Takwara, Kuda Mahachi, Takudzwa Chimwemwe, Godknows Murwira and Knowledge Musona, were all hovering above 26 years-old and slowly approaching their 30s depicts a terrifying picture of serious negligence towards establishing a vibrant national team that is blended with a super structure of junior national teams that are well developed.
Probably, Musona, Khama Billiat and Mahachi are the only faces that were selected to the senior national team from junior national teams and this dearth of talent has stratified the current system where we witness players starting to get their first international caps in their late 27s.
From the look of things, almost the entire squad of the last AFCON tournament will be history, as the FIFA ban intensify its grip on international football engagements.
There is a huge outcry from players who feel that their short-term careers are in danger due to the prolonged absence of international football in Zimbabwe. What has brought us this far and the effects of under-developing grassroots junior talents are too visible in the post FIFA ban scenario where we will have to start from scratch.
Serious questions have to be addressed now and in posterity, as to how best the junior national teams can be strategically planned, managed and pragmatically developed for top-flight professional football abroad in tandem with our international engagements.
As the impasse drags on, local football is also in the mix of this dreadful dilemma.
The recent African Club Champions League draw that was posted by CAF minus all our perennial participant favourites like CAPS United, Dynamos, FC Platinum and Highlanders raises the alarm bells of utter destruction of the game.
This double barrel prolonged attack on football is unwelcome and threatens the very existence of the game even if the ban is lifted. The flight of sanity out of the window from both parties threatens the existence and survival of football in our country as the failure to swallow their pride intensifies by each ebbing day.
In the face of such hardline stances of uncompromising power play, undiluted truths should guide our national framework towards establishing sound development programmes that help improve the standards of youngsters so that they can compete at the highest levels of international football engagements but negative energy runs deep in the adrenalin of our national football administration hence this death-bed state of our game.
Let us all mourn and cry for our national junior teams who are being sacrificed by the very same leadership that was elected to serve them. Let us weep and wail for these innocent souls whose future careers are being wrecked and purged. We have to stand up and defend our youngsters who face the most draconian challenges of destruction of our national football.
Online Reporter