Online Reporter
Howard Musonza
Head, Zimpapers Sports Hub
HE came with bravado and the air of a redeemer, but 12 months later Michael Nees stands exposed, two wins, a trail of excuses and a record that insults the ambitions of a football-mad nation.
The Warriors are out of World Cup contention, still searching for belief, and saddled with a coach who has mocked rather than lifted them.
Hearing Nees speak, you would think Zimbabwe had hired a world class coach who had conquered Europe and lifted trophies on every continent.
Instead, what the Warriors got is a man whose career borders on mediocrity and his self-defined success, whose arrogance outweighs his achievements and whose every press conference drips with disdain for the very country that pays him.
The 57-year-old German, the first substantive Warriors coach since Zdravko Logarusic, hasn’t delivered victories.
He has delivered excuses.
His exaggerated bravado, his condescending tone, and his constant claims that Zimbabwean football was in the “dark ages” before his arrival mark him not as a saviour, but a charlatan to some.
Nees’ playing career barely lasted five years in Germany’s lower leagues. Hardly a foundation for arrogance. His coaching record reads like a tourist’s passport, Seychelles for a year before quitting, Rwanda for a season before walking away, administrative stints in South Africa, Israel and Kosovo, plus a few Under-21 sides here and there.
Then Zimbabwe.
This, in many ways, is not a giant of world football. He seems to be a soldier of fortune, drifting from one post to the next, feeding on contracts, never staying long enough to build anything, never leaving behind real success.
And yet, in front of microphones, Nees prides himself. He performs like a lecturer scolding unruly students, convinced only he sees truth.
Twelve games into his Warriors reign, he has two wins, both against Namibia. In the World Cup qualifiers, he has played four, drawn two, lost two. Not a single win. Zimbabwe sit rooted at the bottom of Group C.
Pressed about this record before the Rwanda game, Nees didn’t accept responsibility. He reached for history books, twisting them into a shield,
“I think the last World Cup campaign in the group stage you had zero wins. In 2018, if I’m not mistaken, the coach was not paid, you had no wins, no loss because you were banned . . . The last time you had a positive record in the qualification was for the World Cup in 2006, that’s the reality.”
That’s his trick. Drown failure in numbers, deflect accountability, and belittle the past to mask the present.
Yes, Zimbabwe’s record has been patchy. But is that why he was hired, to remind a nation of its scars? Or to heal them?
After a limp 1-0 defeat to Benin, Nees shrugged,
“It’s not that we were smashed, it was a tight game . . . For us the objective was to qualify for the AFCON and the rest is a building process.”
For him, failure is fine as long as he can spin it into “process.” For him, qualifying for AFCON isn’t just a target. It’s salvation.
But history says otherwise. Zimbabwe qualified six times before he arrived. Sunday Chidzambwa took the Warriors to Tunisia in 2004. Charles Mhlauri led them to Egypt in 2006.
Kalisto Pasuwa and even Logarusic managed it. They did it without parading themselves as redeemers. Nees takes what others have done before him and sells it as his personal miracle.
On Zimpapers TV Network’s The Couch, I asked Nees a simple question, could Zimbabwe dream of winning the AFCON? His reply exposed his contempt,
“Let me be honest, look, our objective is not to daydream everything and say we want this . . . The way you talk, you would achieve nothing in football, I’m sorry to say it to you . . . anybody who has just a big mouth will fall very deep on this floor.”
This wasn’t analysis. This was mockery. Mockery of Zimbabwe’s ambitions, mockery of the people he coaches. When asked again what Zimbabwe’s realistic potential is, he dodged, hiding behind vague platitudes.
“My target is, if we perform good we can go far, but we have to perform good and we have to work for it and not talk for it . . . We are working towards going to the second round, I tell you again, and then take it from match to match.”
No conviction. No belief. Just a coward’s trick of lowering expectations and calling it realism.
Now compare that to ZIFA president Nqobile Magwizi, who declared:
“I want to win the World Cup, that’s the ambition. I believe Zimbabwe can do that . . . Zimbabwe is ambitious, the fans are ambitious, the leadership of this country is ambitious, we want to win.”
Zimbabweans dream of glory. Their leaders dream of glory. Their players fight for glory.
But their coach scoffs at glory, dismissing ambition as “daydreaming”.
In 12 months, Nees has faced heavyweights and failed to beat them all. Draws against Kenya, Cameroon, Nigeria, Benin, Niger. Defeats to Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Benin, Rwanda. His only wins? Namibia. Twice. After the Rwanda defeat, his words again betrayed the fraud,
“We are not happy the result, but happy with the performance, with the effort. I can be happy.”
Happy? After another defeat? After another wasted chance? For a man who claims Zimbabwe was in the wilderness, he seems comfortable leaving them there.
When Nees speaks, it is not with conviction, but condescension.
“When I came, we wanted and we needed to qualify for the AFCON. Why? You would have been again two years in the wilderness . . . Would you have preferred not to qualify for AFCON? You would sit here and you cut me now in pieces.”
That’s his worldview, Zimbabwe should be grateful for scraps, grateful for the bare minimum, grateful to him.
“But Zimbabweans are not beggars. They are believers. Believers in big dreams, big fights, big ambitions. Nees doesn’t share that belief. He mocks it. He diminishes it.
When Nees was hired, ZIFA’s Normalisation Committee had options, Spaniard Gerard Nus, veteran German Winfried Schafer, Antoine Hey, Brazilian Marcio Maximo.
Instead, they chose Nees, a man whose career highlights fit into a footnote. And Zimbabwe is paying the price.
Out of the World Cup. Stuck with excuses. Stuck with a man who doesn’t believe in them.
History will not remember Michael Nees as the man who rescued Zimbabwe. It will remember him for what he is, a soldier of fortune who came for the money, mocked the people, and left behind nothing, but broken promises and hollow quotes.
Howard, even if we got Carlos Ancelotti to coach the current crop of Warriors, it will remain the way it is. It not coaches here. It’s more our standard of football that has sunk so low even Dynamos is threatened by relegation. Look at how we have been performing at regional tournaments in all ages groups. Nees wasn’t involved. So desist from pointing fingers at coaches. Our football has been mismanaged with great skill for decades. Very few players have been attracting attention in leagues like South Africa. We are simply poor when it comes to standards.