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Khama Billiat

ZAMBIA and South Africa are Zimbabwe’s biggest football rivals and what happens in those two countries, either the positive or the negative, usually draws a lot of interest within the game’s huge constituency in this country.

That is why when the Warriors qualified for the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations finals, while Chipolopolo and Bafana Bafana failed to make it to Gabon, football fans in this country seized on that as a golden opportunity to parade the bragging rights that came with our success story. You talk to the average football fan here and it’s certain that he or she is likely to tell you, using bragging language, that behind every club that wins the South African league championship, especially in recent years, is the inspiration provided by the talent, or talents, of Zimbabwean football stars.

They will point to Willard Katsande’s priceless input in helping Kaizer Chiefs win the South African championship in 2015, Khama Billiat’s defining role in inspiring Mamelodi Sundowns to their title in 2016 and the part that Cuthbert Malajila played in helping Bidvest Wits become champions this year.

Those fans will tell Sundowns’ Champions League success story last year owed, to a large part, to the brilliance of Billiat whose inspired performance was duly rewarded by CAF who named him as the best in-field footballer, plying his trade on the continent, at the organisation’s end-of-year awards earlier this year.

And, the same fans will probably also tell you about how Zimbabwe international midfielder Zimiseleni Moyo has been inspirational in helping Zambian side Zanaco to qualify for the group stages of the CAF Champions League, including producing a man-of-the-match performance in the crucial eliminator against Young Africans of Tanzania.

Willard Katsande

Those fans, too, find it difficult to swallow the fact that while Zambia and South Africa have been crowned champions of African football in the past, with Chipolopolo winning the AFCON title in 2012 and Bafana Bafana winning it in 1996, their Warriors are yet to scale those heights in this game. It’s an open secret that most of them have been following the way the Zambia Under-20 national team, known as the Junior Chipolopolo, have been making waves at the FIFA Under-20 World Cup in South Korea where, this week, they qualified for the quarter-finals of the tournament..

The teenage Zambian footballers have transformed themselves into box office material in with their free-spirited attacking football which, in the last two matches, saw them scoring eight goals against Iran and Germany and eliminating the European heavyweights.

The Amajita of South Africa, who were also at the same tournament, fell by the wayside in the group stages after losing two and drawing one of their three matches. But while the Junior Chipolopolo have given the people of Southern Africa a reason to be proud of their achievements, they have also provided us with a reminder of what we have not been doing, and also what we should be doing, to ensure we add value to our national game. In this game, there is no substitute in investing in youth development programmes if, as a nation, you are serious about writing long-term success stories and, to their credit, the Zambians have done far better than us when it comes to that important aspect of football.

The pillars of the team that has done well in South Korea, goalkeeper Mangani Banda and striker Partson Daka, are part of a grand project that has been many years in the making and the duo was part of the Zambian youth team that played at the 2015 African Under-20 Championships.

That Zambian side finished bottom of their group, after losing all their three matches against Ghana, Mali and South Africa, who humbled them 2-5 in the final group game, but — for the visionary football leaders in our neighbouring county — those depressing results were part of a development programme which, eventually, would reap fruits in the future. And, two years later, the young boys they sent to be given a baptism of fire in 2015 used the experience they gained from that adventure to destroy the opposition at the 2017 Under-20 African Championships and win the tournament with Daka being named the best player.

Now, they are rocking the world and the Zambians know they have a group of players who can form a foundation on which they can build a competitive and successful Chipolopolo side in the next few years.

Cuthbert Malajila

There are a lot of lessons we should pick from the Zambians and one of them is that, probably, there isn’t any need for us to send players who are over the age of 20 to the COSAFA championships this year, but teenagers, like the exciting Leeroy Mavhunga, who can use that stage to develop themselves.

In that case, we won’t be chasing meaningless short-term results, but laying a firm foundation for long-term suc- cess. It’s not a coincidence that two of our best players who featured in the qualifiers for the 2017 African Under-20 Championships, Peace Mahaka and Bukhosi Sibanda — who scored the two goals in Gaborone that knocked Botswana out of the qualifiers before we were eliminated by Cameroon — are some of the best performing youngsters in the Premiership today.

Sibanda is the current leader in the Golden Boot race, with seven goals, playing for struggling Bantu Rovers while Mahaka has shone in the Dynamos team and scored the winning penalty in the Independence Cup final against Highlanders.