Online Reporter
Zimpapers Sports Hub
AFTER staging their first big COSAFA tournament in eight years, hosts Zimbabwe believe staging the tourney has left them richer in knowledge as they drew major lessons from the COSAFA Under-17 competition.
New ZIFA Head of Technical Dominique Niyonzima, who is barely a month into his office, said Zimbabwe’s failure at the youth stage was also a practical lesson that success does not come overnight.
Niyonzima contrasted Zimbabwe’s fortunes to neighbours South Africa, Mozambique and Angola. With the top three countries winning through to the CAF Under-17 AFCON, champions South Africa, runners-up Angola and third-placed Mozambique will represent COSAFA at the continental competition.
While the young Warriors were knocked out without offering a fight in the group stage, champions South Africa and Angola literally walked into the final with some displays rich in talent and technical astuteness.
Even the bronze medallists Mozambique and Comoros, who finished fourth, proved they were way ahead of the hosts with deserved wins during the group stages. The neighbours benefited from their strong investment into youth football development structures.
“This Under-17 tournament gave us a perfect lesson on how to go about it,” Niyonzima said.
“Let’s just take three examples: South Africa, Angola and Mozambique. The three of them reached the semi-finals. All of them have been involved in two-year projects.
“They told us that Angola has been in Portugal more than three times. Whereas we started training on September 2 (about 10 days before the start of the tournament). So, this is a typical example that we can’t expect results overnight.
“That’s why we said that development is a long process. We got lessons from that, and we are going to work on it, and to see that this mistake doesn’t happen again.”
The Young Warriors’ woes were largely attributed to a shoddy scouting programme and a late start to the preparations.
However, going forward Niyonzima said junior football structures will be strengthened.
The experienced 62-year-old Burundian also believes schools are a very important component of football development.
Previous ZIFA executives had somehow divorced from the once-vibrant schools’ system.
National age-group teams were selected on an ad hoc basis via trials during competition times. But ZIFA have since signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Primary and Secondary School Education where they hope to enhance the disintegrating schools’ football system.
“I happen to understand, if I’m not mistaken, that football is only played in the second term. The other term, there is either athletics or other sport activities.
“So, it means that during the whole year, there are sport activities in schools. Second point, we are all parents. We wouldn’t want our kids to put more strength in football and forget about schooling.
“So, that’s why we engaged ourselves in discussion with the Minister of Education to find a right balance.
“But in terms of development, to play football only in the second term is not enough. Your team will never be competitive. We have to find a way of putting down schools of excellence.
“For example, in each and every province, or starting from each and every region, where the selected players will be put in one school, they are followed by tutors, and even if it comes to a push, they give them extra lessons.
“But keep them training so that we can combine the two,” said Niyonzima.
He said ZIFA were incorporating all the football development initiatives, including private academies into their programme.
ZIFA chief executive Yvonne Manwa suggested that all academies would need to be registered afresh. Niyonzima had indicated that he had been inundated with calls from various academies that were seeking to register with ZIFA.
“Since I came here, I got like two correspondences from people asking that they want their academies to be recognised. We have to look into this, first of all. To be an academy, there are criteria that you have to fulfil,” he said.
“That’s why we want, maybe in a year or two, starting from now, to put down our own academies that we can manage.
“But for the others, we are going to put the criteria down, and then they are going to re-register. If you don’t meet those criteria, you will never be recognised as an academy.”
ZIFA have also opened the door to private organisations like Francis Zimunya’s ZIFFASOL, who previously were running parallel structures. “I’m new here but from what I heard, football has been suspended for three years. Obviously, people love football. They didn’t want to stay without playing football. That’s why maybe those parallel institutions started.
“But now things are normal. Just an example, two to three weeks back, we were called in Checheche.
“In Checheche, the people who called us were running a parallel competition.
“But they called us to go and witness their competition.” Now they’ve joined ZIFA. So, what we can do today is to urge those parallel institutions to come and join ZIFA.
“There is a simple example. In Zimbabwe today, there is only one Government. The recognised institution in Zimbabwe is ZIFA.
“So, everything has to go through ZIFA. Now things have come to normal. And we want everyone to come and be part of ZIFA so that we can bring our football to other dimensions,” said Niyonzima.
