peterTalking Football with Zenzo Moyo
ZIMBABWEAN football has been left behind by all of its peers and has become a reactive fraternity that is unwilling to plan progressively.
Why has Zimbabwean football failed to progress?
Why are other national teams improving and not ours?
Why do we not have a progressive development programme for women’s or youth football?
We don’t even have a development plan for our coaches!
South African Football Association president, Danny Jordan revealed that they had a seven-year development programme and this showed with Banyana Banyana’s success at the Women’s African Cup of Nations (Wafcon).
What that tells us is that it’s possible, very possible if focus is shifted towards planning and we move away from reactive or kneejerk decisions as and when something happens in our game – whether its qualification or failure!
Our Mighty Warriors qualified for the Brazil Olympics yet we now struggle to compete!
We have been playing women’s football for years yet we still seem stuck in a rut – going nowhere fast! If we look at the Warriors themselves, the story is much the same.
Simple case in point – why have we fallen so far behind the likes of Egypt, Cameroon and even our neighbours South Africa and Botswana? We used to not just compete with these giants, we beat them also!
And the likes of Botswana were our whipping boys.
Yet now we celebrate victories against minnows and accept defeat to the ‘stronger’ nations.
This was unheard of in yesteryear!
South Africa won the Africa Cup of Nations in 1996, clubs from that country have consistently competed remarkably well at continental club championships while we are still ‘growing’ the game.
There is clearly something wrong with the way we do things in our game.
Our biggest problem is that we have no plan and we never seem to worry about not having a plan.
Our plan must involve everyone including Government and only this way can we ensure that whenever we develop any sort of plan for our game, we don’t have a scenario where this or these plans are chopped and changed whenever we have a change in leadership.
If everyone is involved, no one will have an excuse to try and change what has been agreed as a unit for the good of the game.
As a footballing nation, we have regressed from the 1990’s when Dynamos made it all the way to the final of the African Champions League.
Successive clubs have contested in these club championships, but have failed to get into the group stages.
This should show us of the lack of strategy in our football development.
We have the skills but no recognisable plan to harness these skills. We need to have proper planning that will not be disrupted by changes in power or power dynamics.
If Germany had a ten-year development plan for coaches, how much more for player development?
This is the route we need to take!
But first we must get past our petty fights and jealousy which is the major reason why we do not have unity of purpose and without unity of purpose we have no solid plans that will work.
We are way too jealous of each other and this must come to an end.
Instead of pointing out that so and so has no qualification, we must be asking ourselves how can we help so and so to get these qualifications.
We need to learn to be united in our love for football
Another problem we have is a failure by the powers that be to identify people with a true and demonstratable interest in football development.
We need to stop our dangerous habit of coming up with programs or clinics and only invite our friends to participate. And its these friends who don’t add value to the game.
When there are such programs, they should be attended by people who have both the practical capacity and passion for football.
We have people who have been on the same patch of grass for years and it is these people that hinder our progress.
We have people who are involved in football because they belong to so and so or are associated with so and so. It is these people who end up going on workshops and clinics.
This has to stop!
We must send our young and talented coaches, players and managers to these workshops or courses but we are not doing this. It’s time for regeneration of our game!
We need to figure out how it used to be done in yesteryear when we were more than just competitive against the likes of Egypt, Cameroon and Nigeria.
It worked and we maybe need to revisit what was done back then and reconfigure it for the modern game.
1 Corinthians 1:10
I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.
Online Reporter