Online Reporter
Howard Musonza
Head, Zimpapers Sports Hub
MICHAEL NEES sat across from me on The Couch — Zimpapers TV Network’s football show — as he marked his first year in charge of the Warriors.
He leaned forward, gesturing with the confidence of a man who wanted to convince himself as much as his audience that Zimbabwe’s World Cup dream was not over.
“We are not yet out of the World Cup,” he said.
“If we win all four games, we would come to 16 points. That could be a playoff spot.”
The four games he was referring to were not some vague horizon.
They were spelled out – away to Benin, home game against Rwanda in South Africa on Tuesday, then South Africa and Lesotho next month.
Four games, four wins, 16 points, that was the ladder Nees placed beneath the Warriors’ sinking campaign.
It sounded bold, it sounded defiant, it sounded like belief.
But it was bravado masquerading as possibility. Because here is the truth: Zimbabwe had not won a single World Cup qualifier under him.
They had drawn against Nigeria and Benin, and now they have already lost the first of the four games he promised would spark redemption, a 1–0 defeat to Benin in Abidjan. To talk about sweeping all four fixtures was never a show of strength.
It was delusion in plain sight.
When I pressed him on realistic objectives as the team had qualified for the Africa Cup of Nations finals later in the year in Morocco, Nees snapped back with irritation.
“Our objective is not to daydream. We want to come to the second round (at AFCON) and then take it match by match. If you put the end target at the beginning, you achieve nothing . . . anybody who has just a big mouth will fall very deep on this floor.”
The contradiction was glaring.
He mocked daydreamers one moment while daydreaming aloud of four straight wins the next. He dismissed big mouths while projecting his own.
That contradiction has defined Nees’ tenure. He has now overseen 11 games in charge. The return? Two wins, six draws, three defeats. Both victories came against the same opponent, Namibia, in the AFCON qualifiers, hardly continental heavyweights.
Beyond that, Zimbabwe have looked flat, uninspired and bereft of conviction.
In the three World Cup qualifiers under his stewardship, they are winless, rooted to the bottom of Group C, their hopes extinguished before they even found life.
The Benin loss was not cruel fate.
It was the natural consequence of a team led by a coach with no answers.
Against Benin, Zimbabwe started well, looked busy in possession, but there was no incision, no conviction in the final third.
Once Benin settled, the Warriors retreated into themselves, sitting deep, waiting for the inevitable.
When Steve Mounie rose to head home late, it was not a sucker punch.
It was the logical end to a match that Zimbabwe never truly looked capable of winning. And with that, the first rung of Nees’ four-game miracle ladder was smashed beneath him.
Even before that game, Nees was reaching for permutations.
He hinted that South Africa’s possible sanction for fielding Teboho Mokoena while suspended might provide Zimbabwe a lifeline.
“If the chance arises from the results that we can grab, maybe a playoff spot, then grab it with both hands,” he said.
That is not strategy. That is desperation.
Zimbabweans are tired of calculators, tired of clinging to backroom technicalities in Zurich, tired of praying for disciplinary committees to do what their players and coach cannot on the field.
They want victories, not permutations.
Hope
This, however, is not to say the squad has nothing. It does.
Jordan Zemura, Devine Lunga and Tino Kadewere were showing promise.
Teenage Hadebe and Knowledge Musona are dependable. Washington Arubi brings valuable experience.
But the team lacks identity, coherence and courage. Nees has done nothing to forge a spine.
He has gambled without balance, ignored fresher options who might have injected urgency, and instead pinned hope on talk and bravado.
His tactics do not convince.
His substitutions come too late.
And his public words, instead of clarity, now sound like hollow boasts.
The fans have stopped hiding their frustration. Their conversations are laced with sarcasm, bitterness and resignation.
They brand Nees a “suspect coach”.
The jokes hide a deeper pain, the sense that Zimbabwe football has once again been led down a dead-end road.
Nees likes to point to AFCON qualification as proof of progress, his self-styled evidence that he turned water into wine.
But Zimbabwe had been to AFCON six times before him.
Sunday Chidzambwa, Charles Mhlauri, Kalisto Pasuwa and Zdravko Logarusic, all got the Warriors there.
Nees did not break new ground. He simply joined a list, then exaggerated his place on it. What he has not done is win where it matters most. So now, with Rwanda ahead on Tuesday and South Africa and Lesotho to follow, the context has shifted.
These are no longer opportunities to chase a playoff.
They are dead rubbers, academic fixtures played for pride.
Nees spoke of four wins reviving a campaign. He has already lost the first. The dream is gone.
Zimbabwe’s 2026 World Cup journey is over.
