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Eddie Chikamhi Senior Sports Reporter
DYNAMOS coach Tonderai Ndiraya has lamented the dearth of prolific goal-scorers in the Castle Lager Premier Soccer League and believes the outsourcing of foreign-players could help his team get the competitive edge this season.
Sadly, goals appear to have dried down in the modern Premiership where the race for the Golden Boot no longer produces fireworks.
The last man to win the Golden Boot was Clive Augusto with 14 goals, but then, he had only played half the season before moving to South Africa, where he found the going tough and returned home after one season.
Giants Dynamos have found themselves in worse situations because of their misfiring strike-force. They scored 28 goals from 34 games in the previous 2019 campaign.
Apparently, relegated side Mushowani scored more than them after bagging 36 goals. It appears Dynamos have continued with the poor trend in this new campaign.
Ndiraya is worried the Glamour Boys have found the back of the net only twice in their opening four games of the season.
He told journalists yesterday that DeMbare tried without success to look for local solutions to their woes as the domestic Premiership clubs have been recycling the same failed players over the years, with no clear development plan in place.
As a result, Ndiraya said they have had to look beyond the borders and roped in three West African players to spearhead their quest for goals.
“I think it’s a national problem, if we are to look at statistics and how many goals our top scorer scored in the last league run in 2019.
“I think it was Clive Augusto with about 14 goals, and he scored those 14 goals in the first half of the season.
“The statistics are not good and if you look around for a lethal striker you will not find any. So we had to import, supposedly import goals from outside,” said Ndiraya.
Dynamos, who host Chicken Inn at the National Sports Stadium this Sunday, have turned to Nigerian forward Alex Orotomal, and the Ghanaian duo of Martin Ofori and Emmanuel Zengayire Paga in the hope of bolstering their attack.
They also turned to their former player Evans Rusike who had a stint in Zambia before retracing his footsteps back home.
In the quest for balance, Ndiraya signed attacking midfielder Ralph Kawondera, winger Issa Sadiki and fullbacks Brendan Mpofu and Keith Murera.
Dynamos have also embarked on a junior revolution that saw them giving promotions to exciting ex-Prince Edward Academy youngsters like Bill Antonio, Luke Musikiri and Hamilton Gomba last year.
“We’ve got quite a number of youngsters within our ranks. Of course, when you fail to get answers from the current generation then you’ve got to look at the younger generation and that’s what we are doing,” Ndiraya said.
“Yes, in the meantime we’ve imported goals, so to speak, and hopefully they can quickly get into the groove and start giving us goals.
“Importing is one thing and playing, and actually scoring, is another. So it is our hope that we made the right decisions and that these foreign players will give us goals.
“If what we saw is what they can give us in our environment, I have no doubt that these foreign players will really add something special to the team. But we’ve done that, of course, with our local talent in mind.
“And that’s why we also brought back Evans Katema. We hope that he can use his experience and rediscover the scoring form that he had in 2019.
“It’s quite a long time but we’ve seen him and we believe in him. Hopefully, he can live up to that billing. But that was the whole idea, there isn’t much in terms of scoring in the local market.
“That has also been coupled by the fact that our league hasn’t been active in quite a long time. We haven’t been playing games so really to find a striker with a scoring form locally is really going to be very difficult,” said Ndiraya.
Online Reporter