dyton mupawaenda
Sharuko on Saturday
IT’S easy to provide the answer when the question about who is the Greatest Of All-Time, among Zimbabwean football coaches, comes around.
Sunday Chidzambwa is the obvious choice and the statistics provide a powerful backing to that obvious choice.
Seven league championships with Dynamos, two more than what CAPS United, as a club, have won in 50 years in this game, represents an impressive individual collection.’
In fact, by the time the Green Machine won their first title, after Independence in 1996 Mhofu, as an individual, had already won SIX league championships and the final one would follow in 1997.
He is the only local coach to lead a Zimbabwean football club to the final of the CAF Champions League.
It remains the high point of domestic football coaching and, a quarter-of-a-century since they reached the top of Mt Kilimanjaro, it’s a feat yet to be matched on the domestic front.
He is the first coach to take the Warriors to the AFCON finals, ending a 23-year wait for qualification for the continent’s premier football tournament.
And, he is the ONLY coach to take them there TWICE, as if to prove that when he took them there the first time, it wasn’t a fluke.
But, there is only one other Zimbabwean coach who can claim that he did something which can qualify to be classified as a bigger achievement than everything that Mhofu did.
His name is Shadreck Mlauzi.
The unassuming school Physical Education teacher was virtually an unknown gaffer when he was thrust into the role of head coach of the Mighty Warriors.
No Zimbabwean sports team had ever qualified for the Olympics before with the women’s hockey team, which won gold in Moscow in 1980, having gone there through invitation.
Mlauzi appeared as a lightweight choice in what was Mission Impossible for the Mighty Warriors to qualify for the Olympics in Rio, in 2016.
Given the absolute chaos that was at a bankrupt ZIFA, whose drip feeding from the pockets of Cuthbert Dube had dried up, Mlauzi and his Mighty Warriors appeared to be on an adventure in which they were chasing more of fantasy than reality.
The chaos at 53 Livingstone Avenue manifested itself in the second round of the qualifiers when, after eliminating Zambia, Mlauzi and his team found themselves stranded in Harare, unable to fulfil a match in Cote d’Ivoire.
ZIFA could not fund their flight and the Ivoirians were handed a 3-0 walkover victory.
However, FIFA didn’t throw the Mighty Warriors out of the tournament, or suspend them from future tournaments, as is usually the norm in such circumstances.
Instead, FIFA ruled that the West Africans should fly to Harare and fulfil the second leg of the qualifier, an order the Ivoirians refused, leading to them being thrown out of the tourney.
Suddenly, Mlauzi and his team, who had been on the brink of elimination a few weeks earlier, found themselves with the challenge to beat Cameroon, and book a place at the Rio Olympics.
A Rudo Neshamba goal, in a 1-2 defeat in Yaounde, proved priceless and when she scored again at Rufaro, in a 1-0 victory, to help her team win the battle on the away goals rule, history was made.
Zimbabwe had qualified for the Olympics, for the first time in our history, and the unassuming PE teacher from Sikhulile High School, had scaled Mt Everest and touched the heights no other Zimbabwean coach had scaled.
Seven years have passed since our anthem was sung, for the first time, at a football tournament at the Olympics.
And, that this happened, in the very country which, more than any nation in the world, is associated with the beauty of football, made this very, very special.
Ironically, it’s the same country where Mhofu had arrived, in the company of Obadiah Sarupinda, for a coaching course, on which the foundation of his coaching career would be built.
That was in 1984.
The iconic photo of Mhofu and Sarupinda posing with serial World Cup winner, Mario Zagallo, who was one of the co-ordinators of the high-profile course, is priceless.
It’s a throwback to a past when our coaches really went to proper coaching courses and not these Mickey Mouse coaches, called CAF Licences, where nothing is learnt and everything is guessed.
SEVEN YEARS AGO, MLAUZI WAS IN PARADISE
The beauty about Mlauzi’s appointment was that he brought an injection of fresh ideas into our game which is notorious for recycling the same coaches and, somehow, expecting them to do something different.
To his credit, he came with a different mindset, built on the values of science, which his profession as a PE teacher had taught him well.
He believed in the small things which make a difference, the virtues of proper training and proper resting, the right time to load the sessions and the right time to let his players recover.
The right time to make them concentrate on the physical side of their athleticism and the right time to make them concentrate on the psychological side and the right time to make them concentrate on the formations and stuff like that.
He appeared a good man, the nice guy no one would choose to hate.
And, he had gone all the way in his education, including acquiring a university degree, which was in line with the changing trends in modern coaching.
The game also rewarded Mlauzi in a big way and he basked in the glory of being the first Zimbabwean football coach to be accredited to guide a team at the Olympics.
At the media conferences, he spoke with confidence, outlining his nation’s vision with clarity, with his words widely chosen and well spoken, and we all felt so proud of him.
This was the ordinary hero, we told ourselves, that our game had been looking for, all this time, an ordinary school teacher from the City of Kings, who had embraced his destiny.
Even Wicknell Chivayo was charmed and, long before he started giving state-of-the-range vehicles to everyone who matters in his life, he bought a new 4×4 truck for Mlauzi to use during his official duties as Mighty Warriors coach.
There are some who claim that having such a vehicle, let alone any kind of car, was not even in the immediate dreams of Mlauzi that, at that stage of his life, he didn’t even have a driver’s licence.
Well, that theory has not been tested.
But, what was clear was that never, even in his wildest dreams, had Mlauzi thought he could coach a national team at the Olympics and drive, or be driven around, in a brand new 4×4 truck.
It’s an unforgiving game and by the time Mlauzi lost his job, he left with nothing, without even the 4×4 truck which had become his regular mode for transport.
Recently Mlauzi returned from the cold when he was appointed coach of the Mighty Warriors for the second time.
His hastily-assembled side did well to reach the semi-finals and eventually finish fourth at the COSAFA Women Championships.
But, the explosion of allegations that he exploited his position to try and forcibly kiss a member of his technical team and then pat her backside, which led to his arrest this week, have destroyed the empire he was trying to rebuild.
Of course, he remains innocent, unless proven guilty.
But, in an environment poisoned by that kiss by Luis Rubiales on Jenni Hermoso, and all the chaos it caused in our game, it’s difficult to see him coming back and forging a career.
WE REALLY NEED PRAYERS
And, this is quite unfortunate.
In a game clearly desperate for coaches it can appoint someone, without a national team track record to take charge of the Warriors, Mlauzi should have fancied his chances.
If Herve Renard, the man who guided Chipolopolo and the Ivoirians to success in the Nations Cup, can switch effortlessly between coaching men and women’s football, surely, what could have stopped someone like Mlauzi?
But, that won’t happen now, especially in this mess, which he has created for himself and, in a football world where the Spanish fiasco poisoned the oasis, the game’s moral police is likely to get the worst punishment possible.
He has no one but himself to blame.
He messed up his chance simply because, given the story that we have heard in court, he could not control his lust.
And, driven by his emotions, he foolishly believed that a female member of his technical team could be his pet project to satisfy his relentless lust.
So, he will have to watch from the sidelines as Baltemar Brito guides the Warriors on their return to real international football in the World Cup qualifiers next month.
He will have to watch from a distance as a coach, who has never taken charge of a national team at such a level of the game, finally breaks his World Cup coaching virginity, at the ripe age of 71.
I like Brito, make no mistake about it, because I am convinced that he has brought life to Highlanders.
Those who really know me well will tell you that I tell them, all the time, that local football can never thrive without a healthy and competitive Bosso.
I tell them that if Bosso had won the last four league titles, our football would have been on a different level, in terms of excitement, with guaranteed full stadiums, wherever Highlanders were playing.
But, I also tell my friends that I don’t think Brito was ripe to be handed his first national team head coaching job, on the basis of what he had done at Bosso, because in the jungles of African football, you find different beasts to what is on the local scene.
Right now, my prayers are that Brito is not fired at Bosso.
Because, should that happen, it would be very tragic – a man who has just been deemed to have failed at a club being asked to guide an entire nation.
It will turn all of us into a joke.
Brito’s sequence of results, since FC Platinum found a way to end his club’s unbeaten run on August 26, has been one of, if not the WORST, in the league.
Bosso have played NINE games, including that loss at Mandava, and won just ONE, which was a 2-0 home win over Yadah.
Brito and his men have lost FIVE games, drawn THREE and scored just FOUR goals, while conceding 13 goals.
That six of those games were against the likes of Yadah, Hwange, Sheasham, Simba Bhora, Cranborne Bullets and Green Fuel, puts Brito’s struggles into proper perspective.
Only two coaches, Brito and Tonderai Ndiraya, have failed to score against the league’s bottom club, Cranborne Bullets, in the Hurricanes’ last NINE games.
This is a miserable run in which the Bullets have won just once, in nine games, and lost six while failing to score in EIGHT of those matches.
When one brings in the matches Brito took charge against Botswana (friendly), CAPS United (Chibuku Super Cup) and Division One Select (friendly), which were all lost in one way or the other, the real grim picture emerges. That’s the man who will lead us in our World Cup qualifiers.
We really need to pray for a Miracle.
To God Be The Glory!
Peace to the GEPA Chief, the Big Fish, George Norton, Daily Service, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and all the Chakariboys still in the struggle.
Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Brunoooooooooooooooooooooooo!
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