Chronicle Editor
Eddie Chikamhi, Harare Bureau
NEW Warriors coach Michael Nees has vowed he will not bow to the influence of cartels in domestic football as he will base his team selection purely on merit.
The German expatriate coach was officially unveiled by Zifa yesterday in Harare where he addressed a curious media on his plans to turn around the fortunes of Zimbabwean football.
Nees, who has previously coached Rwanda and Seychelles national football teams and held technical and elite coaching leadership positions in association football over the past 25 years across continents, revealed he needed space and autonomy when it comes to team selection.
The 57-year-old claimed he has never encountered serious problems with authorities seeking to interfere in team selections in his career and will not anticipate that with Zimbabwe, where allegations of shadowy cartels and unscrupulous player agents seeking to force their players in the national team have been made in recent years.
“In my previous jobs, which is not exactly how it appears on Wikipedia, I had to deal with a lot of representatives of players. It’s a fact that players have representatives or agents, but they don’t make selections.
“You have to select the best possible team for your upcoming challenges, and I have had no problems with them. I think we made it crystal clear to them always that there is a line which shouldn’t be crossed.
“A player must perform on the pitch, he must show us he is able, he must show the team he has commitment for the team… For me, the performance on the pitch is everything, nothing else, and I have no family relations or kinship relations here, so you can be assured that I can be objective,” said Nees.
His immediate task is to announce the squad for the upcoming Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers against Kenya and Cameroon coming up in a fortnight.
Both matches will be held at the Mandela National Stadium in Kampala, Uganda.
The Warriors will kick off their quest for a place at the 2025 Afcon tournament in Morocco with a date against Kenya’s Harambee Stars in a Pool J on September 6.
They will then play host to Cameroon at the same venue on September 10. Zimbabwe and Kenya do not have Fifa-approved stadia to host international matches.
But while Nees was unveiled yesterday, the rest of the backroom staff remains a mystery despite the limited time left before the Afcon qualifiers.
Zifa advised yesterday that the association’s technical committee was still working on the candidates to assist Nees in the Warriors dugout.
The German coach, who agreed to work with locals as part of his contract, was clear on the calibre of assistants he wants.
“The staff must add value, very simple,” he said.
“If you can get me a copy of me in the staff, we need to complement each other on and off the pitch and of course they must have commitment, technical understanding, we need also loyalty and to accept the role, that’s also very important.”
The Warriors coach is already behind schedule and will have a few training sessions with his team before plunging into the crucial Afcon qualifying battles. But the task is clear, Zimbabwe need to qualify for the 2025 Afcon finals to be held in Morocco.
“We need to embark in a good start. We can have quantitative objectives to say we must have a win or a qualitative objective which is how you play, with what energy, with what discipline, and with what style.
“If you come out of a game and you can say we did everything in our powers to give a good performance then the quantitative objective or the result will follow.
“We must not separate that. We must play decent football with confidence, with discipline, with passion in order to have the results. First is to apply that and then the other things will follow,” said Nees.
The German coach said he will need to adjust to the time constraints.
“The time is very short, we must admit. We are under time pressure, absolutely but I really think I have the experience in working in association football mostly.
“A club coach has a lot of time always; they have six weeks’ pre-season; they have this and that. But when you work in association football with federations there is always lack of time and time pressure. So, I really have to make use of every minute available.
“I have developed my own strategies, my own training. It starts even in the training. When you have a team six weeks together yes you can do whatever you can, but when you have only three or four sessions before the game you must probably think what can we do which is related to our formation?
“I really think I had to learn the hard way because I have always been under time pressure because I have worked more in association football, and not so much in club football.
“I am very confident that I can say that I can use time very efficiently. But of course, we are also a brand-new team. The staff and the players don’t know me so we must get the message very quickly over to them and that is definitely not easy.
“We are under a lot of time pressure. The ideal case would be we go in camp tomorrow with the local team until departure and then I will have a week to assess the players.
“I will make probably a preliminary squad of 40 players like other countries, but I don’t think you will be happy with a squad of 40 players right now.
“That is not feasible, the local league has to continue. We really have to work in one direction. We must be realistic of what time we have available. We have no time to waste, that’s for sure. We must go straight to business,” said Nees.
Online Reporter