Coaches: scapegoats of our time!

17 May, 2015 - 00:05 0 Views
Coaches: scapegoats of our time! Norman Mapeza

The Sunday News

Simba Dube
CREDIT is usually given to players when a team stages a superb performance but when the same entity hits a bad patch, all blame is directed at the technical department.
But can we talk of the team’s brilliance without the ingenuity of the coach?
Unfortunately for the man in charge of the technical bench, we are living in an era of television games where either management or team owners’ just press the reset button whenever they feel like the gaffer has got it wrong or that the three points are at stake.

The local league has not reached the half mark but it has been a nightmare for some coaches, as they have been placed on the firing line with one already suspended. And yet when the club administration chooses to be stingy, and, a coach fails to engineer a good side, the gaffer is either laid off by the club’s executive or scorned by the usually clueless, hard-to-please fans.

As it stands the league’s longest serving coach Nation Dube who was assigned in January 2013, is already on the firing line.

And yet on the contrary, in the English Premier League, largely followed in this country, the coaches’ longevity is the common denominator.

Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger are even regarded as masters of longevity as they have served for more than a decade in one club. Even though David Moyes’ stint was cut short at Manchester United, he had been on the Everton bench for 11 years.

In our league, the powers that be don’t hesitate to give pink slips to coaches for failure to constantly pocket the maximum, to either secure the top four spot or to win the league at the end of the season.

Barely a fortnight ago, ZPC Kariba’s management soiled the CVs of the then head coach Saul Chaminuka and his assistant Godfrey Tamirepi by suspending them following a string of racking losses with the latest being 1-2 defeat to Harare City.

Katuruturu played eight league games under Chaminuka’s guidance this season. Despite the gaffer’s superlative efforts in the previous season which saw the club finishing in the second position on their maiden season, he was still put on ice; something which can be considered as an absurd move by the club’s administration.

One thing that the multitude may not seem to understand is the fact that domination has always been the hardest thing to achieve in sport. Reaching the top is not that hard, but maintaining the position is an uphill task.

Highlanders once the symbol of Kainduism, have Bongani Mafu now as the man sitting on a hot seat surrounded by hard-to-please fans. Under his charges Bosso lost the precious three points on their first campaign of the season and it was something which didn’t go down well with the Bosso family.

Against league debutants Flame Lilly, losing the maximum points meant the departure of the gaffer. If Mafu was to fail to obtain the three points, the match played at Lafarge Stadium was to be his final straw under the Bosso colours.
Sometimes when a team gets involved in a chain of inept performances, the problems won’t be lying in the gaffer’s tactical shrewdness but the problem might even be bigger than that, take for instance, the Caps United story.

On his second stint as the Dynamos head coach David Mandigora has found himself in the pressure cooker after his side went on a three-game winless run. Despite being among the top three on the log table, the Glamour Boys fans were already baying for his head.

After DeMbare ended the bad spell with a victory against FC Platinum, Mandigora, the 1980 Soccer Star of the Year, uttered a statement that has come to haunt him – the PSL revolves around pocketing three points.

“It’s a great relief after what happened in the past three matches, so it’s good to score and get a win. At least we got three points,” said Mandigora in one of his post-match comments.

Sometime last month FC Platinum fans were clamouring for the head of coach Norman Mapeza, following the club’s loss to Harare City in a league match.

Changing coaches will not guarantee the team’s fortunes as it might even harm the team’s future performances.
The coach alone can’t write the success story of a team especially without adequate resources, good players included.

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