Local coaches need to up their game!

Calvin Mavunga, Special Correspondent
IF coaching experience is a prerequisite for the national team coaching department, then why have we turned a blind eye to a disaster that unfolded right under our noses, but nobody said anything.

In fact, most people were happy to throw in names of local coaches, including those without coaching experience, but I realise that we are really not sure about what we want and we lack consistency in fundamental appointments.

We are more driven by emotions and seem to lack proper planning (like a five-year plan), hence we find ourselves in such a predicament that continue to expose us and crumble our system.

This system is not getting any better and it keeps on falling like dominoes. The script is always the same and we just change characters.

The million dollar question is why are we in a situation where we are tired of a foreign coach?
When I last checked, coach Joey Antipas did well and personally I attribute the Warriors’ Afcon qualification to him and he deserves that acknowledgement.

But we dropped him to pay more money to a foreign coach, who went on to produce one win in 14 matches, and here we are again crying foul and seeking another dance with a local coach. Who is fooling who here?
We keep going in the same circles and are right where we started. After a dirty dance with a foreigner, we have now realised how imperative local coaches are.

And should this be our next resort, then let’s be more vigilant and objective.
We must remunerate the local coach what we were paying the foreign coach. That will be a good starting point. We need to respect the value of local coaches; they are professionals and deserve to be financially respected.

I worry that as a nation we sometimes hate our own; we undermine and don’t support each other such that when a local coach makes his selections, most believe he is influenced by money and offers from agents and players to include them in the team.

As I have already indicated above, the solution lies in paying a local coach handsomely so that he does not entertain bribes. Pay him peanuts and he will accept bribes.

So, let’s empower local coaches with good resources and serious preparations to compete against organised countries like Morroco, who always have everything in place.

We don’t want drama and a circus over travel arrangements, accommodation, camping delays and remuneration, among others. These distract any serious coach and players psychologically, and real football people understand that.

We shouldn’t blame local coaches when they lose if we fail to support them on pertinent matters that most people deem diminutive.

With my own experience, I trust our local coaches more. They have vast knowledge and have so much to offer, but the problem they need to fix is working together as a unit. Cohesion is key, but we fight a lot, we fear each other in our system, we undermine each other instead of complementing each other. That’s the cancer which has killed local coaching standards.

Check the amount of chaos that rocks the technical team in most clubs; gossiping, the blame game and always shouting at each other.

That same spirit has gripped us at national team level and it’s a shame because we are good, but we sink in our egos and arrogance, yet we should be learning every day in modern football coaching.

Football is evolving and in as much as we support local coaches, it’s key that we adjust, amplify, modify, improve, develop, build new systems, research and upgrade ourselves.

That way, Zifa will find no reason to employ a foreign coach. Sometimes local coaches are to blame.

At national team level coaches work with players that are playing at big clubs in Europe and are coached by very advanced coaches. So when these players come for national duty, don’t make them undermine you and look at you as an old school coach.

Don’t blame them because they are coming from organised systems where everything is more scientific and digital, and above all, very organised. Vanotonyara kutaura because they respect you.

But if the truth be told, our coaches need to do some self-introspection and understand that the game has changed. The drills you did before may be outdated; the way you conduct your training sessions may be outdated and the foreign-based players are exposed to systems that will shock and humble you.

A Caf A Licence is nothing if you sit and brag with that piece of paper and don’t upgrade yourself by doing research. You need to prove that you can leave Zimbabwe today and go and coach in Europe and fit in the system easily. You need to be ambitious and hungry to learn and develop yourself.

That alone will save us the shame we have been subjected to at the moment whereby a foreign coach with very poor coaching standards for a foreign coach (and that’s my opinion based on my experience with him) heads our national team coaching department.

We need to be honest with ourselves that in as much as we blame the admin side of Zifa, I also think the technical side has a lot to work on and we need to change our mentality if we want results.

For years we have been pinning blame on the administration of our football, but today I raise my voice to challenge the technical side and say we are also to blame for our mistakes and lack of exposure.

We are tired of excuses and tired of hearing that this one is the best coach. We need local coaches that can adjust to meet the technical and tactical processes that foreign-based players can appreciate when they come for national duty.

We need coaches who appreciate technology in football; if you don’t know, then learn and adjust to the digital way of coaching. That’s where modern football is right now.

We need coaches that understand GPS and that appreciate its purpose, not a coach that says it has nothing to do with football. If you are a big coach, no matter what your achievements are and your experience is, if you don’t appreciate GPS technology in football then you are not fit for the national team just like the outgoing foreign coach.

It’s not too late to learn now and research; we love coaches like that. If you don’t appreciate the game of numbers and stats, then you are far from coaching the national team, and that’s the truth.

If you can’t present a comprehensive training plan to your technical director and if you can’t write a professional match report to submit to your technical director, then you can’t coach the national team.

If you can’t evaluate a training session; if you can’t do a game plan strategy presentation on power point at the very least with a projector, then the national team isn’t for you.

If you don’t respect opposing analysis and post-match video analysis, then you are not national team material.

We need excellence in our local coaches and I say it’s not a problem that you might not know some of these things, but we want a coach with a passion to learn and upgrade.

A coach must not accept to work with a thin technical team, you will only be making it hard for yourself and when we demand results don’t complain.

Tell Zifa you need a dietician, nutritionist, conditioning coaches, even finishing coaches, analysts, set piece coach, masseur and scouts etc. The bigger your backroom staff, the better the chances of good performance.

As much as we lay blame on Zifa, our coaches must prepare themselves to change the whole narrative.

No more excuses please! – Mavunga is the performance analyst at Simba SC in Tanzania & a former Ngezi Platinum Stars performance analyst.