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Robson Sharuko in FRANKFURT, Germany
KNOWLEDGE Musona might have failed to set Germany alight but there is something special about him that must have persuaded TSG Hoffenheim to tie him to a five-year deal in an era when Bundesliga teams are investing millions trying to produce home-grown talent.
So much negativity has been attached to Musona’s failure to illuminate the Bundesliga during two miserable seasons here that produced only one goal and saw the highly-rated Zimbabwe international fail to impose himself.
Musona is now back at Kaizer Chiefs, on a one-year loan deal, and critics have said his failure to settle in Germany, which he blames to being played horribly out of position, provided confirmation that he was certainly not as good as might have been portrayed in both the Zimbabwe and South African media.
But a group of Zimbabwean sports journalists, on a week-long tour of duty to this country which began yesterday, were left under no illusion that Musona must, indeed, possess something special for him to move the mountains that saw him getting his contract at a time when the Bundesliga clubs are committing a fortune into a comprehensive programme to develop home-grown talent.
Two things have to be considered here.
One of them is Musona’s age, 21, when he persuaded Hoffenheim to sign him on a five-year deal at a time when the millions that have been poured into the Bundesliga academies by all the clubs in the German top-flight league was supposed to have produced a number of home-grown talent, of such an age group, to satisfy the market.
The other is where he came from, a Zimbabwean player plying his trade in the South African Premiership, which meant that the deal could not have been a gamble given that it wasn’t influenced by any precedents of Zimbabweans, who had travelled the same route, and came here and exploded into stars.
Armin Kraaft, the director of the Eintracht Frankfurt youth development facility, who has been working in these trenches for 17 years now, told Zimbabwean journalists at a media briefing yesterday that for an African player, of about 20/21 years, to be signed by a Bundesliga team now meant that he was someone of exceptional qualities.
Kraaft has been running the Frankfurt academy for years and said with all the resources that are being channelled to produce home-grown talent in Germany right now, for a young football player from Africa to gate crash his way straight into the Bundesliga, it spoke volumes about his phenomenal qualities.
Frankfurt, who have one of the best academies in the Bundesliga with a three-star rating, runs its programme on a budget of about 2 million euros a year and Kraaft said their investment was rather modest, by the league’s standards, with the average club investing about 6 to 7 million euros a year.
All that money is invested in infrastructure, and Frankfurt have a state-of-the-art facility, complete with their gym, boarding facilities, medical centre and training grounds, all for the youth teams, and competent coaches who teach the boys from a very young age the basics of football and hoping that one day they will grow into superstars.
Kraaft was asked yesterday that, given that massive investment into the academies by cash-rich Bundesliga teams, what would be his impression of the talent of a 21-year-old from Africa who just comes and walks into a five-year-deal at a time when the system should be producing quite a lot of such players at home.
“You expect good performance from this player,” Kraaft said.
“You don’t expect this player to be number 26 in the team but one who is an impact player in the team.
“There is a lot of talent in Africa but the structure and level here in Europe is higher. It’s a big benefit for the players to come here.
“It’s a necessary step because the structures here are stable and Anthony Yeboah came here and made a very successful career and became the first black captain of a Bundesliga team.
“But I wouldn’t sign the player if he doesn’t speak the language unless he is an impact player in my team.”
The Bundesliga clubs concentrate on developing homegrown talent, and other young football players they can get from Europe, and with such developed and well-funded programmes to keep the Bundesliga machine well oiled, it needs a special talent for a club from this league, after such massive investments, to look elsewhere , especially in Southern Africa, for their next big young signing.
Given the way the clubs here value giving attention to detail, It’s highly unlikely that they could be rushed into making a panic buy, in this case a 21-year-old from Zimbabwe playing in South Africa, without being really convinced that his talent outshines everything in their academy and all the others available from the production machine here.
An afternoon spent at Frankfurt’s academy gives one the true picture of this giant Bundesliga production machinery, which is working overnight every day to produce the stars for tomorrow, and, crucially in Musona’s case, makes one get a better appreciation of the quality that made these men get convinced that his talent was something that could not be found in their fertile fields.
The academy is a separate entity from the first team, has its own full-time staff and facilities and at Frankfurt, Kraaft has the mandate to produce players for the first team, which means a huge cost cutting exercise when compared to trying to buy a player of a similar quality from another team, let alone another country
On the three floors of the state-of-the art facility, Kraaft runs his empire, which starts from the Under-10s age groups up to the Under-20s, and he has eight buses that have to serve the trainees, picking them up from the various points and bringing them for training and then going back to drop them.
From the age of 15, the players have to go to the gym, twice a week, where the work on building their bodies to face the tough terrain that lies ahead in the professional trenches and all this is done in-house.
There a 10 apartments for players who live at the complex, some of them come when they are about 16, and then leave when they are 19, but the club pays for their stay, food, school and training facilities and equipment after school.
Kraaft says other Bundesliga teams run their programmes on a bigger budget, which only goes to show that for someone to come from out of the system, especially plucked from Southern Africa at an age when the local recruits should be blossoming into the first team, means that he is not average talent.
Musona might have failed to illuminate the Bundesliga on his first coming but it’s a fact that his talent, fashioned on a shoe-string budget at the Aces Youth Academy, outshone scores of players who are being rolled out, every year, by this well-oiled Bundesliga production machine that gobbles millions each year.
That is an achievement that should be celebrated and one needs to come and see the system first-hand to appreciate the mountains that Musona moved just to secure his deal.
Hopefully there will be a second coming for the Smiling Assassin, who at 24 next year, would be wiser and more experienced to deal with the challenges of the Bundesliga.
But even if the second coming doesn’t come, only those who haven’t had the opportunity to see the beast that the Bundesliga has created, to produce the next generation of football stars, will fail to fully appreciate that Musona had something special that brought him here in the first place.
Online Reporter