Online Reporter
MICHAEL Nees has come under the spotlight after the Warriors turned on a lifeless performance in their 0-1 defeat at the hands of Benin in Abidjan on Friday evening.
The result confirmed the Warriors will not be part of the 2026 World Cup show in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
Of course, it was virtually Mission Impossible even before the game as leaders Bafana Bafana had opened a huge gap between them and us ahead of the Friday round of matches.
However, the expectation was that the Warriors would put up a fight and battle for their badge in that duel against Benin.
The reality is that we turned on one of our worst performances in recent months and we didn’t deserve even a point in the match against the West Africans.
That we didn’t score was not even a surprise and had it not been for the heroics of goalkeeper Washington Arubi it’s very likely that we would have conceded more than one goal.
The disappointing thing is that Benin didn’t have to turn on their best performance for them to beat the Warriors on Friday.
The West Africans were average but they were still good enough to beat us.
After the early promise, when Nees arrived, the disappointment is that the Warriors have regressed and the problems, which the German coach was supposed to fix, are now popping up.
We are still struggling for goals and our midfield lacks mobility and creativity and Nees has resisted the temptation of throwing in the young turks.
Yes, on Friday he started with two of them — Tawanda Maswanhise and Tawanda Chirewa — but there were moments during the second half when it became clear that we needed the energy and vibrancy of more young players for us to penetrate the West Africans.
Bill Antonio was on the bench and Nees resisted to throw him into the fray until the last six minutes of the match.
They say a good coach is seen by the way he is able to read the game and make changes which can have a huge impact on the outcome of the match.
This is an area where Nees appears to be coming short and that is worrying us a lot.
His Benin counterpart, who is also German, saw as early as the 54th minute that he needed to make some changes and refresh his team and he acted.
He brought in his first substitute just nine minutes into the second half. He then made two more changes in the 72nd minute and was rewarded with a goal in the 77th minute.
Still Nees kept resisting the need to change and freshen up his squad and, when he did in the 83rd minute, he brought three players at once and by then the battle had been lost.
He has another chance to ensure we win a game in these World Cup qualifiers tomorrow but there is a lot of depression right now among the Warriors fans.
