Madinda Ndlovu has a league championship winners’ medal in his cabinet and, for all the abuse he suffered at Highlanders who fired him and at Black Mambas where he was horribly out of depth, Khathazile can now sit in the exclusive lounge reserved for winners.

Madinda could cap it all on Wednesday by winning the Coach of the Year award, at the Botswana Premiership prize-giving gala in Gaborone, for his role in guiding Mochudi Centre Chiefs to league title honours last season. After adventures in the hostile terrain of the domestic Premiership proved that he was not yet up to the quality needed to grace the podium reserved for gaffers who win the ultimate prize, Madinda had to go to Botswana to win his first league championship as a coach.

Madinda might not be the only Zimbabwean to pick up an award at the prize-giving dinner on Wednesday with forgotten midfielder, Elvis Meleka, also in the running for the Fans’ Player of the Year award.
Now, Meleka was struggling to make the Gunners’ team when he decided it was time to pack his bags and go into the friendly environment of Botswana and, now, he is on the verge of winning an award as the best player in that league.

Clarkson Dzimbiri, remember him, also known as Quarter Chicken, cast a sorry figure in his final days at CAPS United four years ago, haunted by the fans who questioned Moses Chunga’s faith in him which was not being repaid by any contribution from the forward’s ageing body and slowing pace.
The nomadic forward has somehow reinvented himself as one of the hottest properties in the Botswana Premiership where, after an impressive spell at Taffic, he moved to Police where he is even the skipper of the team and delayed Madinda’s success story by scoring a crucial game in the last rounds of fixtures. When you read the Botswana newspapers and you find Quarter Chicken being referred in such glowing terms like “goal-scoring sensation”, you end up wondering what the hell is going on.

According to his Facebook page, Dzimbiri says he will be turning 27 on December 21, which means he was a mere 23-year-old when the CAPS United fans haunted him out of the Green Machine saying he was a spent force, and far much younger when he made a name for himself at Shabanie.
Giant defender, Itayi Gwandu, is one of the most respected players in the Botswana Premiership and was one of the key players when Rahman Gumbo won the league championship there with the same Mochudi Centre Chiefs that Madinda led to the Promised Land.

But the 32-year-old, who played for CAPS United and Masvingo United here, was a huge flop when he returned home to rejoin Gumbo at FC Platinum last July and was embarrassed by the lightning pace of the domestic league and, a big winter signing for the miners, he was off-loaded after just six months at the club.
So, to put it into context, it doesn’t look like our players or coaches are reinventing themselves when they cross into Botswana, but faced with inferior opposition and a non-competitive environment, their talents, ranked as average to low in the domestic league, suddenly sparkle in that darkness.

Terrence Mandaza, for example, can score 40 plus goals in Botswana, but when he crosses the border to join Platinum Stars in South Africa, his shortcomings are cruelly exposed and, given what we saw in his cameo roles for the Warriors, he will be lucky to find a regular jersey in the starting XI of Quelaton.
But you cross the border into Botswana and they will tell you he is probably the best thing that happened in their league, as far as goal-scoring is concerned, and when they talk about Ronaldo, the Brazilian, Benni McCarthy, the South African, they also talk about Mandaza, the Zimbabwean.

A Botswana journalist, Mosimanegape Tshoswane, made an interesting analysis of Madinda, in his article which looked at the three men in the running for the Coach of the Year award on Wednesday, and I will share it with you.
“The former Township Rollers and Nico United coach has finally achieved his first ever medal with a club locally,” wrote Tshoswane. “The Zimbabwean coach was desperate to win a trophy in what many believed to be his last stay in charge with a Botswana team. However, observers point out that Ndlovu’s tactics are not top notch and he won the title by sheer luck.

“He was fortunate to have a pool of players to rotate with ease. Ndlovu has indeed, traded on a simple season as he inherited an already in-form team. In addition, resources at the club permitted for the status quo.”
Madinda, Rahman and League Championships

Madinda won his maiden league title, as a coach, with the same team that Rahman Gumbo led to the league championship.
I’m pretty sure that if Madinda chooses to be adventurous, and leave the comfort zone of the Botswana Premiership and venture into Malawi, he might also win the league championship there.

The top-flight league in Malawi, frozen away from the African inter-club tournaments because the clubs there can’t afford the cost of participating, has been in the backwaters for some time now and, as each year passes by, looks more like one from the Stone Age era than one in the new millennium.
When you go and play in that league, you literally disappear from the radar that monitors movements and events in international club football and virtually the whole world forgets about you. Gift Muzadzi once tried and a few months down the line he was back home and decided it was better to spend his time tending his good garden in Chitungwiza than fooling himself that he was a foreign-based player plying his trade in Malawi.

When you go and coach in that league, you literally disappear from the radar that treks movements and events in international club football and, in an instant, the whole world simply turns its back on you.
Rahman went there and won two league titles with Wanderers, but isolated from the real world of the Champions League and the Confederation Cup, it was impossible to measure himself as to whether he was adding value to his coaching or losing it. It’s like a boarding school, the most beautiful girl there automatically becomes the angel of that little community and, isolated from the real world for nine out of 12 months, you end up buying into the flawed belief that she is the best.

It’s like switching ourselves away from the rest of the world, we don’t read or watch whatever is happening there, and we fool ourselves that the woman we crown as Miss Zimbabwe is the most beautiful girl on this planet.
But, once we are freed to face the world, and we see Miss Venezuela or Miss India or Miss Philippines or Miss Jamaica or Miss Barbados or Miss Colombia, we then realise the flaws of our judgment.

Rahman won the league championship in Malawi twice and has received a lot of positive media coverage for that as another sign of his brilliance as a gaffer, but I have a feeling even Gishon “Gizha” Ntini will do the same in that country. The events at FC Platinum this week, when the club decided to part ways with Rahman after exactly a year in charge, shows the vast gulf that still exists between the comfort zones and reality worlds of Malawi and Botswana and the real world of the domestic Premiership.

Yes, Rahman won the league title here with Highlanders and he deserves a lot of credit for that. What is seemingly forgotten is the fact that the Highlanders team that emerged at the turn of the millennium, the greatest Bosso side of all-time, was a mean machine and that it won four straight league titles was testimony of its pedigree.

It needed good coaches to negotiate the challenges, but even after those coaches left, that Highlanders team continued to dominate the domestic football landscape and in three seasons, two of their key players — Zenzo Moyo and Dazzy Kapenya — were honoured with the Soccer Star of the Year award.
Thulani Ncube was as good a leader as they will ever get, Thabani Masawi would probably have won the Soccer Star of the Year award had the event been held in the 1998/1999 season, when Bosso beat DeMbare to the big prize by just a point.

That Bosso team was tested to the limit and in 2000 they won by just two points over Amazulu, after holding their nerve to earn a draw in a fiery encounter at Mucheke in the final game of the season, stretching their winning margin to three points in 2001 and then to 20 points in 2002.
Even when they were not champions, in 2003, they were second and only a point separated them from champions Amazulu and that to me is a mark of not a great team, but a legendary side. Rahman’s lost years, from the time he left Bosso in 2001 to the time he won the league title at MTL Wanderers in 2007, are conveniently forgotten, but in those years in the capital, his coaching credentials were severely examined and the shortcomings critically exposed.

He landed at CAPS United and his two seasons there were average and the Green Machine faithful will never forget that black day when they were humiliated in the first round of the Zifa Unity Cup by boozers’ side, Highdon Raylton, at the National Sports Stadium. He quit Makepekepe in March 2003 and joined Sporting Lions, then the country’s richest team, whose directors had splashed a fortune to bring in Kapenya, Masawi, Blessing Gumiso, Charles Chilufya, Eddie Nyika, Felix Banda and David Guyo.

But by November 2003, Rahman was gone, fired after a third defeat in four games, as the Lions fell 10 points behind Bosso and was replaced by Clayton Munemo and Callisto Pasuwa. He moved to Motor Action, but in November 2005 the Bulls announced they had suspended Rahman after a string of poor results culminating in the back-to-back defeats against Chapungu and Eiffel Wildcats that saw them plunge 15 points behind leaders CAPS United.
Rahman and the Warriors

Rahman might have lost his job at FC Platinum, but he remains Warriors’ coach and was in Johannesburg on Thursday night for the 2013 Nations Cup draw.
Those who believe in Rahman, like the Zifa board, will tell you that his dismissal from FC Platinum will free him from the challenges and workload of dual responsibility and, with the freedom to concentrate on the Warriors alone, he will come good.

There is logic in that argument because Rahman had two jobs, one with Motor Action and the other with the Warriors, when he was fired in 2004 after that humiliation against the Super Eagles on home soil.
Rahman had two jobs, one with CAPS United and another one with the Warriors when they slumped to that heavy 0-4 defeat against Zambia in an international friendly in Zambia. But today’s Rahman, even after being freed from the pressure cooker of club duties, doesn’t appear to be the right coach to take the Warriors forward. When a coach fails at a club like FC Platinum, with all the resources that they have, what really are the guarantees that he can succeed at Zifa House given the financial challenges that always haunt the association when it comes to such assignments?

When a coach fails at a club like FC Platinum, where he has the luxury of spending as much time as he can choose with the players and working on their strengths and weaknesses, what really are the guarantees that he can succeed with the Warriors where, at best, he can only spend two to three days with the entire team?
When a coach fails at FC Platinum where all that he is representing are the interests of just 2 000 or so Mimosa workers and their immediate families and friends who have teamed up to support this team, what guarantees are there that he can succeed while handling a far bigger project that involves a nation’s interests?

When a coach makes such childish and fatal blunders like Rahman has done at FC Platinum, telling the league’s leading goal-scorer Nelson Maziwisa that he is not good enough to play for the miners, but then somehow calling him up for national duty after he has proved him wrong with his performance at Shabanie, why should we trust him to make the right judgment tomorrow?
When a coach can’t make a simple evaluation, as easy as judging that Benjamin Marere is good enough to play for FC Platinum and for one reason or another freezes him out of the team for six months, what guarantees do we have that, given a bigger national task, such a man will make better judgments?

When a coach is so naïve as to suggest that he would have killed his player, if he was his teammate, simply because that midfielder missed a good chance in one game, what picture does he paint in terms of his man-management skills and what guarantees are there that he will be a different beast in future?
When a coach invests his trust in Mandaza, simply because in years gone by they formed a fruitful partnership in Botswana and then dream that such an alliance can produce the goods at national level, against the Guineas of this world, what guarantees are there that tomorrow his reading of the game won’t remain influenced, if not compromised, by what he went through in the land of the Zebras?
Arnold Chaka has already had a flirtation with the Warriors, maybe Meleka is next, then Quarter Chicken, Clarkson Dzimbiri will follow to lead the line, Itayi Gwandu will return to shore up the defence and Chenjerai Dube will come back to be Tapuwa Kaipini’s cover, Sageby Sandaka will be closer to the picture and we will have guys like Anesu Gondu and George Mpunuki.

Oh, by the way, Max “Malume” Moyo might also be roped in to assist in the technical department and, after his success at Centre Chiefs, Madinda will probably have every right to demand a place on that bench.
Akomana!

Somebody will probably remind me that Botswana qualified for the 2012 Nations Cup finals and we didn’t, fair and fine.
But such things happen in sport, now and again, like Greece winning Euro 2004, Denmark winning Euro in ’92 when they hadn’t qualified and were only called in as a replacement, the Central African Republic eliminating Egypt from the 2013 Nations Cup finals, you name it.

But sooner, rather than later, reality catches up with you and the Zebras were the first team to qualify and the first to be knocked out and the 0-6 mauling at the hands of Guinea showed the gap in class and put them in the right position.
Yes, we also lost to Guinea, last month at home, but that 0-1 defeat was a product of our shambolic approach, the central issue being a coach who stayed with about 30-plus players in camp, in the week leading to the game, as if he was holding trials for Magwegwe or Mufakose Select rather than preparing for a World Cup qualifier.

But even Valinhos, as pathetic a coach as he was, didn’t lose to Guinea during the 2010 World Cup/Nations Cup qualifiers, holding them to a goalless draw in Conakry and the return leg also ending in a goalless draw in Harare.
Has Rahman recovered from the Lost Years?

Rahman’s Lost Years were between 2001, when he left Bosso, and 2007, when he landed the league championship with his Malawian club. They featured spells at CAPS United, Sporting Lions, Motor Action and Buymore, the club he dumped when he left for his Malawian adventure and the lowest point came with that humbling defeat at the hands of Highdon Raylton when he was still with the Green Machine.
A flirtation with the Warriors ended with that 0-3 mauling at the hands of Nigeria, on home soil, amid reports of chaotic scenes inside the camp where players were accused of drinking beer and bringing in women.

During those half-a-dozen years, Rahman’s career didn’t grow and while here and there he was parachuted into national team jobs, on the back of what he had done with Bosso at the turn of the millennium, reality always caught up with him.
To say that Rahman’s career stalled, during those Lost Years, would be an understatement because the truth appears to suggest that it plunged downhill and he was no longer the Prince Charming who had turned Bosso around at the turn of the millennium and given them their first title in six years.

Now, for us to take two league titles, won in the backwaters of the Malawian league that African football forgot and left behind to rot in its stagnant state, and a league title won in Botswana where even Madinda can win and Mandaza can score 40 goals, as proof that he has undergone rehabilitation and is now ripe for a lengthy dance with the Warriors, would be suicidal.

If we needed any proof that the same old Rahman of the CAPS United, Motor Action, Sporting Lions and Buymore era is back, then his year-long flirtation with FC Platinum, which ended in his dismissal, should provide that.
I don’t know where Rahman will take these Warriors, but there were so much, in terms of technical deficiency, in the home game against Burundi, to send shivers down my spine and the psychological blow that will come from the shadow, which will always follow him now, that he was not good enough at FC Platinum, would be an extra burden.

It’s Zifa’s call to make, but then, if you expecting wonders, then you are not living in the real world and, isn’t it ironic that South Africa sacked and replaced their coach, Pitso Mosimane, with a substantive one, while we still stuck with one on an interim basis?

By the way, my good old friend, Tom Saintfiet, has now found a job as coach of Young Africans of Tanzania after problems erupted in Nigeria, where he had been offered the job of Technical Director, leading to the withdrawal of that offer.
I think the Young Africans’ job suits him fine, that’s where he belongs and he won’t have any problems with immigration officers there, and I’m sure if he also went to Malawi, he would win a league championship or two with Wanderers or Bullets.

And if he decides to return to Botswana, where he briefly stayed after he left this country, he will, just like Madinda, also win a league championship there.
That’s his level, not the Warriors, and someone in Nigeria was quick to realise, just like what happened here, that a funny game was being employed in Saintfiet’s recruitment.

To God Be The Glory!
Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chicharitooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
l The only people mad at you for saying the truth are those living a lie. Keep saying it!

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