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The disappointment to Zimbabwe’s soccer fans was immeasurable, heart-rending, yes (you are right) quite palpable. It was an extremely disappointing result in exact proportion to the extremely high level of expectations created by the Warriors’ triumph over Angola in Harare in the first leg played at Rufaro Stadium.
Reasons, causes and what we can call mere excuses for the Warriors’ relatively poor performance in Luanda have been given by various people, including the coach himself, Rahman Gumbo.
He said he had, in fact, warned the Warriors that the Angolans would try to wrap up the match in the first 10 or so minutes. Well in that case, what defensive measures did he take to frustrate the Angolans in those crucial first 10 or so minutes?
If a boxer steps into the ring knowing or suspecting that his opponent will try to knock him out in the first two or three rounds, he would be well advised to adopt effective defensive measures to frustrate and tire out the opponent, and thereafter be ruthlessly aggressive.
Having been closely following the development of soccer in Zimbabwe, my considered opinion is that Zimbabwe lost because it was not fully prepared.
After beating the Angolans 3-1 in Harare, the Warriors psychologically rested on their laurels.
They should have forgotten about that victory and treated the Luanda match as if it was a new game against Angola.
One obvious big mistake Gumbo and his technical team made was to change a winning team. There was no wisdom to change a team that had won by 3-1 and bring in a new, untested group, especially to play a match away from home untested as a team and not as individual players.
Another most important factor to consider when Warriors play at places like Luanda, Maputo, Dar es Salaam, Algiers, Alexandria and Mombasa should be the climate effects of these places on the team.
Angola lies between five and 18 degrees south latitude. That means that it is much nearer to the Equator and thus much hotter than Zimbabwe. In addition to that geographical fact, the city of Luanda is on the Atlantic Ocean coast, a factor that mean that it has higher humidity and higher atmospheric pressure than Harare in Zimbabwe which is located on an inland plateau.
These climate factors had a debilitating effect on the Warriors, and adversely affected their performance. It could have been of much benefit to the Warriors had practised for about a month at low and humid places such as Victoria Falls, or at Kariba or Beitbridge, or still better, at Beira.
The effects of humidity, altitude and heat (even extreme cold) are devastating to every unclimatised athlete, whatever the sport, but particularly soccer, rugby, tennis, boxing, wrestling, swimming and track events.
Some observers contend that even opera singers and ballet dancers also need to get acclimatised to enhance their performance. Having lived myself for a couple of weeks at a time but on several different occasions in Luanda, I can state without any hesitation that the Warriors were seriously disadvantaged by the local climate conditions on 14 October.
Zifa and all those concerned with competitive sports at international level would be strongly advised to look into this important aspect of all of the country’s preparations for international matches held abroad.
It would be sheer folly for a soccer team to practice for whatever length of time in Harare or Bulawayo, and then fly overnight to Maputo, Luanda, Beira, Durban or Cape Town to play there in a day or two.
The best thing would be for the team to spend at least four days or at best a week getting acclimatised. This was once done by the Mighty Warriors a year or so ago when they practised at the Wankie Colliery before flying to Angola for a match. The difference between the Wankie atmospheric conditions and those at Victoria Falls, Kariba and Chirundu, Beira, Durban and Luanda is that Hwange has much less humidity than those places. Its heat is dry.
That apart, it was a little better in any case for the team to have practised at Hwange than not at all, that is to say than to have practised just in Harare.
Another important fact one would wish the Warriors’ coach to remember pertains to the selection of the national team. It would appear that most players are from Harare-based Premier League teams.
Surely there are very good players, especially mid-fielders, in some lower division teams such as Hardbody, Bantu Rovers and even out at Tsholotsho, Mutare and elsewhere. Incidentally, is it invariably true that a player who has been with a foreign team for three, four, six years is much better than a young man who is shining in Division One squad?
I do not think so because one might have reached his optimum and the other is still to. Who of the two is likely to wish to prove a point? The younger and aspiring player, of course.
The issue is debatable. However, mixing new talent with the old is advisable.
The opinion of this writer is that Zifa must spread its scouting net further into the remote corners of Zimbabwe, and national team coaches must focus on the entire nation rather than on Harare only.
Having made a wide selection, Zifa has just got to facilitate the organisation of training for the national team instead of having two or so week-long sessions before important international contents. What we need is a professional approach in team selection followed by practice, practice and more practice.
l Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a Bulawayo-based retired journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734328136 or through email [email protected]
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