Online Reporter
Lovemore Dube and Lawrence Maphosa
THE Warriors’ slide into mediocrity has taken a sharper turn under German coach Michael Nees, whose record is so poor that many are now questioning why he was hired in the first place.
In today’s game, it takes just a quick online search to check a coach’s pedigree, yet when Zifa’s Normalisation Committee, led by Lincoln Mutasa, unveiled Nees in August last year, due diligence appeared to have been thrown out the window.
At the time, Mutasa boldly declared: “He has deep knowledge of the African football landscape.”
Indeed, Nees had stints in Rwanda, Seychelles and South Africa, but none of them were decorated with success. Even more baffling, Zifa passed over Wilfred Schäfer, a proven winner who once led Cameroon to continental glory, to take a gamble on Nees.
That gamble has spectacularly backfired.
In 14 matches, Nees has delivered a paltry two wins, six draws and six defeats. That’s a win rate of 28.6 percent. While that’s double the disastrous 14.3 percent posted by former coach Zdravko Logarušić, it’s still well below what is expected for a coach earning a reported US$10,000 a month.
By comparison, local coaches — often working with fewer resources and smaller pay cheques — have done far better.
Joey Antipas: 3 wins, 2 draws, 1 loss in six games, a 61.1 percent success rate.
Reinhard Fabisch: 13 wins, 6 draws in 26 matches, a 60.2 percent success rate.
Kalisto Pasuwa: 9 wins, 10 draws in 25 matches, 49.3 percent success rate.
Charles Mhlauri: 11 wins, 10 draws, 11 losses in 32 matches, 47.8 percent success rate.
Norman Mapeza: 14 wins in 34 matches, 47.1 percent success rate.
The numbers paint a grim picture — Nees ranks among the least successful Warriors coaches in modern history.
Critics argue that had the coaching legends of the 1980s, who managed stars like Japhet Mparutsa, Ephraim Chawanda, Stanford “Stix” Mtizwa, Madinda Ndlovu and Moses Chunga, been given today’s financial backing, Zimbabwe might have qualified for the World Cup by now.
Instead, with Nees at the helm, the Warriors appear to be stuck in reverse, stumbling through matches they should be winning and leaving fans wondering how long this nightmare will last.
