admin
Sharuko On Saturday
WHEN Charles Mabika asked me on Wednesday to predict the scoreline of the Warriors’ opening 2025 AFCON qualifier, I told him that the result would be a draw.
In the closing stages of the latest edition of the authoritative Game Plan weekly football magazine show on ZTV, the legendary Mabika asked me to predict the outcome of our opening game.
He also did the same with Justice Majabvi, the former Dynamos skipper, who was the other pundit on the show.
Majabvi, who is also known as ‘Chief Justice’, predicted a Warriors’ victory.
My heart would have gone for a Warriors’ victory but my mind reminded me that there was need for caution and I went for a draw.
It was just a wild guess but something was telling me that this game, on neutral ground, was unlikely to produce a winner.
I felt the Warriors were unlikely to win, because they rarely win against the Harambee Stars of Kenya, but something also kept telling me they were unlikely to lose.
It’s been 22 years of battles between the two teams since they first met in the CECAFA Cup semi-final on November 24, 1982.
And, as fate would have it, yesterday, the two teams were back where they met in their first battle in ’82, the Mandela Stadium in Kampala, Uganda – more than two decades after their initial meeting.
The Harambee Stars won that fist game 2-1 courtesy of goals from Nashon Mahila and Joel Masinga while Friday Phiri was on target for the Warriors.
Since then, the Kenyans have won seven of those head-to-head battles, drawn four and lost only ONCE against the Warriors.
That sole defeat for the East Africans came on October 13, 1985, when we beat the Harambee Stars 2-0 in the final of the CECAFA Cup at Rufaro.
Shacky Tauro and Gift M’pariwa scored for the Warriors as Zimbabwe celebrated its first major success story in football.
We have never beaten the Harambee Stars in either an AFCON or World Cup qualifier.
And, in our last five head-to-head battles, the East Africans had won four matches with the other one ending in a draw.
This year alone, ahead of yesterday’s game, we had met them twice, and lost both matches.
As I had predicted, yesterday’s game ended in a draw, a goalless one for that matter, in what was a fitting result to a match which was largely short on the quality which was expected from the battle.
We were the better team in the first half, in which we created the game’s best chance after Khama Billiat created an opening that deserved a finish, before we fizzled out in the second half.
Washington Arubi, back in goals for us for the umpteenth time, was a virtual tourist for the entire first half of yesterday’s game, resembling someone who had gone to Kampala for a tour of Lake Victoria.
I didn’t feel Arubi, who celebrated his 39th birthday last month, was the right man to call to serve the Warriors as their first-choice goalkeeper.
I felt this was a step backwards and leaving Martin Mapisa, who appears to represent the future when it comes to our goalkeepers, was a massive blunder on the part of those who selected this crew of Warriors.
However, Michael Nees will point to the fact that Arubi did not concede a goal, on his return to the Warriors, justifies his decision to invest his confidence in him as the best goalkeeper in Zimbabwe right now.
The goalkeeper’s primary and main priority is to ensure that the opponents don’t score a goal and, for Arubi, to return with a clean sheet was a huge boost for the decision by the new coach to invest in his services.
If you ask me, Arubi was not tested yesterday to provide justification that he is the one who should be the first-choice ‘keeper for the Warriors.
What is probably not questionable is that Arubi is a better goalkeeper than Donovan Bernard who, for all his youthful enthusiasm, has found the responsibility of being the Warriors’ first-choice keeper being such a very difficult task.
Mapisa is a nice young man and that he has distinguished himself playing for Dynamos, especially in the Confederation Cup, suggests that he deserves a chance in the Warriors going forward.
NOT BAD MICHAEL, IT COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER
I didn’t pick anything in yesterday’s game to tell me that Nees’ presence on our bench added any value to the Warriors and they were a different outfit to what they would have been under, let’s say, Jairos Tapera.
If I have to be brutally honest, I will say that I did not see anything, in terms of technical and tactical improvement, by our Warriors in yesterday’s game.
But, I have to accept that it’s not fair to expect Nees to have imposed his way of doing things on a team he has only coached for a couple of days in which he was meeting all the players for the first time.
It’s not fair, too, for us to expect our players to have embraced the Nees way of coaching, after just a few days in which they have been listening to the German coach in terms of how he wants them to play.
These things require time and if there is any positivity then it comes from what we have been hearing from our players who have been saying that what they have been seeing from their new coach is very positive.
Of course, we can’t expect our players to say anything different because it is the nature of footballers never to be seen to be giving an impression that their coach is someone who doesn’t know what he is doing.
Even if that coach is Erik Ten Hag.
But, no one can say that Nees did not have an encouraging start to his tenure as Warriors coach with this draw against the Harambee Stars.
It’s a golden point for him, especially for a fellow whose other previous romance with the Nations Cup qualifiers doesn’t have a CV which someone will send to try and get a job to coach my beloved Chegutu Pirates, and it’s something that we should treasure.
I know there are guys out there who will say that we should have won this game and that would have justified all the goodwill that Nees will get in the next few days ahead of the game against Cameroon.
But, our record away from home has been horrible and Nees will get the benefit of doubt that, at the end of it all, he gained a point and it’s something that we have not been doing of late.
When your previous teams have been the Seychelles and Rwanda then a draw against Kenya, on neutral soil, is not a very bad result.
If I have an issue with Nees, in terms of yesterday’s game, then it has to be the fact that in the second half, he appeared to have lost the plot while the Kenyans became even stronger after the break.
In football, they say that the second half belongs to the coach and if that is true then the Kenyan coach was better yesterday.
After the break, his team was by far the better side and he appeared to have told them to exploit our weaknesses, in terms of defending, on either flanks.
And, boy oh boy, they had a field day down those wings with their wide men always finding space and freedom to charge whenever they had the ball.
Nees’ men withstood all that and, in a way, this was something very positive because, in terms of defence, we have been very poor in recent games.
There has been an obsession about Tino Kadewere’s poor return when it comes to the Warriors and that is a fair assessment.
But, what this has clouded is that we have switched our attention from the defensive deficiencies which, in a very big way, has been our Achilles Heel in recent matches.
Against these same Kenyans, we had conceded FIVE goals, in just two matches, this year alone and for our defence to find a way to stop the Harambee Stars from scoring, representing a success story for Nees.
It evokes some romantic throwbacks to a time when we were under the guidance of another German coach, Reinhard Fabisch of the Dream Team era.
For me, those were the years of my life, when our Warriors would always deliver as and when we wanted them to get a positive result.
What is not questionable is that Fabisch’s blueprint was based on his team’s amazing ability to ensure that the opponents would always struggle to score.
Now, and again, when we scored, we knew that was it.
No one can fault Nees for the fact that we did not score yesterday because in that first half, we had the chance to score and that we didn’t is all because those who were tasked with doing so did not come to the party.
Nees is still learning a thing or two about his players and, while I don’t believe he is the right coach to take us where we intend to go, I feel he is a cool guy who deserves to be supported because he is one of us.
For Nees, this was a good start and one can only wonder what will happen if Tawanda Chirewa plays as well as he is capable of doing, if Tawanda Masvanhise gets more minutes on the pitch and if Marshall Munetsi plays better than he did yesterday.
This was a good point, anything else is just drama.
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 Chegutu Pirates!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Zaireeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Text Feedback: 0772545199
WhatsApp: 0772545199
Email: [email protected]
You can also interact with me on the ZTV football programme, Game Plan, where I join the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika on Wednesdays
Online Reporter