We need our unique style

Bothwell Mahlengwe
WHILE it is important for leadership change at ZIFA House, it is also important to take note of shortcomings in other areas, especially the technical aspect of our national game.
Leadership change is vital for revitalisation of our football.

However, it is of paramount importance that we clarify all the problems bedevilling our football so that we are all on the same page.

A detailed report of all the deficiencies of the current system is essential at this stage, ranging from legislative, administrative, financial, marketing, technical, education, development and so on.

They all need to be articulated in some blue print. From then on, we can map out a plan of solutions as a nation and move forward. True to the phrase, “clarity precedes change and change precedes success.”

My analysis is that it won’t be easy to remove Cuthbert Dube from the Zifa presidency whether by persuasion or by any other means.

FIFA statutes, ZIFA Constitution, financial muscle and his support among the councillors seem to give a sense of invincibility.

In that case any meaningful development would have to come from the Board members through their respective portfolios.

So, in the meantime, we put it upon the other Board members to help steer our football ship in the right direction. This is a challenge for you Omega Sibanda and your team.

Nonetheless, the fight for leadership renewal at ZIFA should not stop because Cuthbert Dube doesn’t have our football at heart.

Imagine, he could endure more than 10 hours of air travel to go to Brazil for the World Cup, but could not spare less than 30 minutes of road travel to join us at the National Stadium to watch and give support to our beleaguered Warriors.

What an FA president!

Martin Luther King, Jr summed it up well, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

I am actually in the process of booking for a one-on-one meeting with Dr Dube when he comes back from Brazil.

I want to get it straight from the horse’s mouth what plans he has for us and our game. Remember, this is a very reasonable person by any means.

While we can put the bulk of the blame for the decay of our football on ZIFA, we cannot afford to overlook our shortcomings in the technical aspect of the game.

I strongly feel that the Warriors elimination from the 2015 AFCON by Tanzania was the final feat in exposing us in this area.

I once questioned the quality of our coaching courses vis-à-vis the final product we are getting, that is, our local coaches. To this day, we have a big problem of failing to score goals at club and national levels.

This alone tells a story.

Let’s start with the Tanzania game at the National Sports Stadium. Firstly, the build-up was a disaster, technical-wise. The technical team showed its indecisiveness by calling anyone available to camp.

I don’t think Denver Mukamba and Ovidy Karuru were in their plans in the first place. If they were, why were they not called up for the first leg? I am made to believe that contact was even made to Silas Songani.

Secondly, Edward Sadomba’s presence was made so crucial you would think he was going to be the only striker in the Warriors’ team.

After arriving late for camp (not his fault though), he was made to play for the entire match.

So much for a show for confidence (or rather lack of it) to Kuda Musharu and Tendai Ndoro.

Such panic behaviour would obviously affect the players. A coach should be bold and confident. He should show guts and give confidence to his team by making unpopular decisions.

On this one, they terribly let us down. The presence of Tswatswa and Muzadzi, both goalkeepers’ coaches, has raised more questions than answers.

On a national level, I feel we have been shooting ourselves in the foot by not adopting our own unique system of play, one that suits us, especially considering the built of most of our players.

It goes without saying that we need to identify, develop and nurture a particular system of play that gives us an edge over other teams.

Look at South Africa, they had their shoe-shine piano and it won them the Africa Cup of Nations in 1996 and got them qualification to the World Cup in 1998. The moment they dropped it they slid down the football rankings.

Spain mastered the tiki-taka football and it won them two European Championships and a World Cup. North African nations, Egypt in particular, had their fast-paced wing play based system and it won them several Africa Cup of Nations titles.

West African nations rely on their physique and they make good use of the long balls and they have four of the five slots for African teams going to the 2014 World Cup.

This goes to show that we need our own way of playing that makes up for our lack of size. All along we have been playing long balls upfront and it hasn’t been working for us.

Even against Tanzania we employed the same strategy and you could see that our strikers where Malajila was the biggest let-down as he was dwarfed by the modestly built Tanzanian defenders.

Pagels might have failed to give us the success we wanted in his short spell with the Warriors but for me he showed the nation a system of play that suits us.

It is not a coincidence that the Mighty Warriors made a huge leap under his tutelage and now they are on a free-fall.

We cannot afford long balls. They don’t suit our height and size. Short-passing, fast-paced and possession-keeping game is the one that gives us an edge.

I know the final score matters in any game but the match we played against Egypt in Alexandra under Pagels gave us a glimpse of how far we can compete if we play a system that is to our advantage.

It is unfortunate that one of our so-called great coaches believes that the best way to avoid conceding goals is to pump long balls into the opponents’ half.
Are our strikers big and strong enough to win and keep those long balls?
No.

Maybe that’s why they are failing to score goals because they expend most of their energy trying to win balls. The best way, common sense will tell you, is to keep the ball. How can opponents score when they don’t have the ball?

We have (or we will have) a new Technical Director and one of his main tasks should be to identify a playing system that suits us as a nation.

He should then find ways of incorporating it at all levels of our game. Germany did it with Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund and their junior teams.

So it can be done.