NORMAN’S LAW

ma-de a passionate appeal to the domestic football family to unite and put their shoulders to the wheel ahead of the resumption of the senior team’s African Cup of Nations campaign at the end of the month.
The Warriors, still to register a win, face Mali in Bamako on March 26 in easily the toughest away assignment of their Group A qualifying campaign.
Mapeza, who took charge of their opening qualifier against Liberia in Monrovia which finished 1-1, bounced back into the fold on Wed-nesday night when he was named the substantive Warriors coach.
He was mandated to try and help the Warriors qualify for next year’s Nations Cup to be jointly hosted by Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.
Mapeza heads a technical department that includes Motor Action gaffer Joey Antipas, goalkeepers’ coach Richard Tswatswa and team manager Sharrif Mussa.
The former Zimbabwe captain wasted no time in getting down to business yesterday, lining up meetings with acting Zifa chief executive Jonathan Mashingaidze and the association’s technical director Nelson Matongorere.
The trio of Antipas, Tswatswa and Mussa accompanied him at those meetings.
Mapeza revealed that his passion and the desire to see the Warriors among the 16 nations that will take part at the continental soccer showpiece had largely influenced his decision to accept an offer by Zifa president Cuthbert Dube to take charge of the Warriors again.
The former Monomotapa coach, however, made a passionate appeal to all the game’s stakeholders to come together to assist the Warriors, insisting that “we cannot lose sight of our main objective which has always been to qualify for the Nations Cup”.
Mapeza is aware that his presence in the Warriors dressing room had sparked deep divisions in the Zifa board with those in power voting against his appointment and forcing him to resign as caretaker coach on November 5 last year.
Then the board was divided over whom to appoint as the sole Warriors caretaker coach between Madinda and Mapeza.
But Mapeza believes those differences from the past should not blight the Warriors campaign again and reckoned that the senior team could build from their last Nations Cup qualifier against Cape Verde at home last year.
In that match, Madinda and Mapeza were the Warriors co-coaches and the team could only manage a point after playing a lifeless 0-0 draw against Cape Verde at the National Sports Stadium.
“I think I have come back because of the love of my country and for the sake of all those who supported me. I have a passion for our football and I have always said that we cannot afford to miss out on such big tournaments like the Na-tions Cup, it pains to have those competitions when your country is not there,” Mapeza said.
The coach also welcomed the return of Anti-pas, a championship winning coach with Motor Action, the presence of the experienced Tswa-tswa and the affable Mussa.
It is also good that Joey and Sharrif are back, they are a brilliant team to work with.
“At the end of the day we need to move forward and focus on our main objective which is to qualify for 2012. We must leave whatever happened in the past to the past and try build on our last performance against Cape Verde and see how we can improve on that”.
The tough task awaiting him and the expectations of a nation tired of the Warriors’ failures is also not lost on Mapeza.
Mapeza is today expected to meet again with Antipas, Mussa and Tswatswa to finalise their roadmap for the senior team and possibly name the squad that will assemble for the Battle of Bamako.
“Mali is not going to be easy. They won their last game at home but we have a job to do and I am going to do the best of my abilities to see to it that we get a result from Bamako.
“We are going to meet as the technical team and map the way forward because we have also just heard that there is a friendly match and we will see how it goes from there.”
Mapeza reckoned that a result for the Warriors in Mali would throw his men firmly back into contention.
“It is still an open group but I think we just need to get a result against Mali and we are back in it. Of course people may talk of our lack of many friendly matches but we hardly get a chance to use the foreign-based players unless the friendly is on a Fifa date,” Mapeza said.
The Warriors are scheduled to meet the Brave Warriors of Namibia in an international friendly in Windhoek, which will also be used as part of commemorations of Namibia’s Independence Day on March 21.
In a rare move for the Warriors, the senior team will have an external training camp in Windhoek before they fly out to Mali.
This came after Zifa and the Namibian Football Association agreed to a deal in which the Namibians will take care of the Warriors’ upkeep in that country even after the March 21 international friendly. The Warriors would then fly straight from Windhoek to Bamako via Johannesburg and Accra in Ghana.
Although Mapeza is only expected to name his squad this afternoon or at least by the weekend, the coach is likely to stick with the bulk of the foreign contingent that did duty in the matches against Liberia and Cape Verde.
This means only a few players such as goalkeeper Washington Arubi and defenders Gilbert Mapemba and Qadr Amini could make it from the band of home-based Warriors who took part at last month’s African Nations Championships in Sudan.