The Sunday News
Simbarashe Dube Sports Reporter
DESPITE the country having a wealth of talent in football the national teams’ failure to outfox their opponents in the previous weeks can be considered as a lesson that should be used to guide the nation to yesteryear’s glory days.
The warriors tumbled out of the Cosafa Cup in a humiliating manner against Namibia; the Mighty Warriors fell to Zambia in the first leg of the Olympic Games qualifiers while the Young Warriors fired blanks on home turf against Swaziland in the first leg of the Olympic Games qualifiers.
Altogether the disappointing performances by the national teams were symptomatic of a deeper malaise in the Zimbabwean football.
Shoddy preparations and clubs withdrawing their players from camp proved the Young Warriors’ Achilles heel, in a seven day’s period in which this soccer mad nation witnessed terrible performance by two other representative sides.
In the Cosafa Cup, a tournament whose title indisputably belonged to them just six years ago, the Warriors embarrassingly bowed out at the preliminary round.
The four-time Cosafa champions’ humiliation by Namibia was so disheartening, although it was somehow bound to happen considering the shambolic preparations made by the team. Even if they were to side-step the Brave Warriors of Namibia the national team’s demise was just around the corner.
As a national football mother body, one of the many responsibilities of Zifa is to make sure that the national football team is on camp in time ahead of an impeding campaign. But when a national team goes into a competition with ill-prepared players, it only reflects that someone, somewhere, somehow had slept on duty.
“Practice makes perfect” has been the golden rule in any sporting code that if properly embraced can guarantee success.
Commenting about the Warriors’ exit from the Cosafa Cup, the former Warriors captain Peter Ndlovu pointed out that in order to succeed the team should have much preparation in the near future.
“The secret lies in preparing as hard as you can,” said Ndlovu.
On a positive note, the same mistake of inadequate preparation should be avoided if the Warriors hope to secure place in the 2017 African Cup of Nations.
The same problems of shoddy preparations also haunted the Mighty Warriors in their first leg tie of the Olympics Games against Zambia’s Shepolopolo as the match ended 2-1 in favour of the latter. The national women soccer team had less than one week in camp ahead of this tie.
Perhaps the result was to be different if only they had been fully prepared as they once walloped the same side 5-0 in August 2012.
In their recent campaigns the Mighty Warriors have been hitting a snag and the latest being failure to book a place in the All Africa Games last month. Probably their below par performances has been fueled by the absence of the women’s super league, engineering a good side from a set of players who have not been in action can be a herculean task for any coach.
On today’s return league of the Olympics Games qualifiers against Shepolopolo, the Mighty Warriors have been in camp since the reverse fixture last week and, chances are high that hey might good proving that all that is needed is enough time for preparation.
