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BARRING either an earthquake or the Lord Jesus Christ’s Second Coming, the brave members of the Warriors squad who will play in the World Cup qualifiers that begin in 12 days — on June 7 to be exact — will definitely be announced this week.
They are brave in the sense that they are expected to work miracles after being assembled with obscene haste by a ZIFA Normalisation Committee that seems to be out of sorts.
The man who will take charge of the team, Manica Diamonds coach Jairos Tapera, was only announced on Friday evening.
And unless he had a say in selecting the squad, which is highly unlikely, as ZIFA would have by now sent tickets to foreign-based players, Tapera will have to work with unfamiliar tools, which could be problematic.
How Tapera ended up being the preferred candidate to take over on an interim basis is anyone’s guess.
The powers that be could have cast lots to pick their man.
Who knows?
Perhaps it is because Tapera’s side, which is perched on top of the Premier Soccer League, is on a purple patch.
Behind schedule
But preparations are already behind schedule.
Our opponents in the upcoming fixtures have announced their provisional squads.
South Africa’s coach Hugo Broos, for example, named a 36-member preliminary team more than 10 days ago.
Bafana Bafana will be battling it out with Nigeria’s Super Eagles away in Uyo on the same day the Warriors collide with Lesotho.
The tiny mountain kingdom announced its team early last week.
To be fair, the Super Eagles were late in announcing their squad, with the new coach, Finidi George, revealing the line-up on Friday.
But they have less challenges compared to us, as they have largely retained the players who have been faithfully delivering for the Super Eagles.
Despite dropping captain William Troost Ekong and Nottingham Forest’s Ola Aina, they still have considerable firepower in Alex Iwobi, Wilfred Ndidi, Victor Osimhen, Kelechi Iheanacho and Ademola Lookman, who famously scored a hat-trick in the Italian side Atalanta’s triumph over Germany’s Bayer Leverkusen in the 2024 UEFA Europa League final on Wednesday.
But for all their wretchedness, the past ZIFA administrators, not least Felton Kamambo, would have done something by now.
In football, encounters do not come any bigger than the FIFA World Cup.
And if we can behave in a non-committed manner in preparing for the World Cup, how then will we react to lesser tournaments such as the African Nations Championship (CHAN) or COSAFA?
God help us!
New coach
What is worse, we know that Tapera is unlikely to last the distance, as he will be jettisoned once ZIFA finishes laboriously going through the CVs of the more than 100 suitors who applied for the hot seat.
It will mean a new coach will take over during the campaign and begin building his own squad.
Obviously, this will be jarring.
As we say in these shores, a hunter will always prefer his own dogs.
It is crazy.
Bra Shakes is beginning to believe that ZIFA is haunted.
Successive administrators of our local game, from Leo Mugabe to Kamambo, have only succeeded in bringing us heartache, pain and disappointment.
The situation is becoming so desperate that maybe enlisting the services of a sangoma or prophet will help exorcise the demon
that has settled at the local football mother body.
But, yet again, this might not work.
Zaire, now DRC, once tried it when they took a team of sangomas to the World Cup in 1974 and were humiliated 9-0 by the then-Yoguslavia.
But this is how people think when they become desperate.
The answer lies in simply doing the right things.
Continuing to do the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is, as they say, madness.
Online Reporter