adminI’M always taken aback each time our Warriors are bundled out of a tournament since we are sent packing early just about every time we take part in any event.
While other teams will be focusing on the advantages of finishing first or second in their groups at such tournaments, Zifa will already be checking flight times and booking tickets home for the Warriors.
Why is anyone really surprised at how things turned out for the Warriors at their fourth appearance in the African Nations Championships (Chan) in Rwanda? It’s rather odd to see the outpouring of frustration and anger from soccer fans and ex-players.
What other outcome did they expect? Did people honestly believe that we could have gone all the way as charged by Zifa president Philip Chiyangwa and other dignitaries at the Warriors’ send-off dinner a few days before the squad’s departure for the Great Lakes region?
In fact, it was baffling listening to Chiyangwa charging the Warriors to go all the way at the Chan. How were they supposed to get that far because whatever is wrong with the national team now has always been wrong ever since we were admitted as a Fifa member in 1980?
Our national team has been failing for more than three decades because we are paying the price for ignorant decisions or a lack of decisions in the past. Attempts to turn on current players, the coach and his tactics are utterly pointless. Our football has long been in a mess and the grassroots of the game are where the problems lie.
Unless this problem is truly addressed, we can change coaches and playing personnel, but it will just be turning to yet another failing crop and our Warriors will continue to come home too soon from every tournament.
For the Warriors to banish their history of underachievement, work must begin now on the long-term plan of improving coaching standards from the grassroots level. We have failed at the grassroots because we have always been of the mistaken belief that it’s the players that need to be developed at that level. But who will develop players at the grassroots when we do not have qualified junior coaches?
Zifa and our clubs must wake up and smell the coffee. You don’t start building a national team from the Under-23s as Warriors coach Callisto Pasuwa seems to think. A national team is built right from the foundation, and that is from eight years of age right through the different age-groups.
You don’t take players to a tournament to learn, but to win. There is no room to learn at the actual tournament. Learning time should be in-between tournaments. We are tired of being humiliated at tournaments in the name of learning. This kind of learning should never be done in our name.
There have been too many excuses down the years and it’s disappointing that a coach can express widespread satisfaction with losing in the face of clueless performances.
Technique and intelligence, not strength and the will to win, are the qualities that our Warriors need most to deliver.
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