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Phillip Zulu, Correspondent

THE Qatar World Cup 2022 football qualification group stage of Zimbabwe, Ghana, South Africa and Ethiopia is the litmus test of our lifetime as we ponder on how best we can achieve this faltering dream of ever gracing this magnificent tournament.

Certain facts are stubbornly visible in terms of how we aspire to gatecrash into this football jamboree that has brought so much popularity and fame to top athletes who represent their national teams with pride and honour, as they seek to bring the much coveted trophy to their respective countries.

Our situation in Zimbabwe is similar to the current woes haunting the Ghanaian Football Federation in pursuit of cleansing the administration of dilemmas that have blighted their local leagues.

Most clubs have been inactive and the federation was duly suspended for its improper conduct on the way it handled delicate issues of the local football, what has made Ghana stable in the midst of such turmoil is its resilience in using foreign-based players who are dotted around the top world football leagues.

What drives Ghana outside their local leagues is our Achilles conundrum that weakens our progress and aptitude, in posting formidable performances that will raise our flag higher in Africa and beyond.

In Ghana, they value their own players who play abroad simply because they have invested heavily on that front, something that is overtly detestable by our administration in Zimbabwe due to lack of insight, critical thinking and strategic planning.

What has made the local leagues in Ghana fare better is simply because they have continuously sought to improve their systems of coaching, young player development programmes and planning, dovetailed in exchange programmes with top foreign clubs in highly competitive leagues.

It’s common to notice the majority of all players in the Ghanaian national teams have been trained abroad in top youth professional clubs, something that our national team, South Africa and Ethiopia are evidently lacking.

Ghana has the pedigree to feel confident in this group as they seek to cruise through and make it the fourth time, participating in this glamorous gathering.

Notwithstanding such visible positive traits from the West Africans who have their top players, Jordan and Andre Ayew, the two sons of the famous Abedi Pele, playing blinders for their respective teams of Crystal Palace and Swansea.

We have Macauley Bonne and Andy Rinomhota playing in a very competitive English Championship League that has some of the best clubs that dropped from the Premiership and, shockingly, we seem not bothered to engage them on serious national issues.

These are some of the best players we have at the moment and one would have thought that the agenda for our progress in this tough group will be to strategically look at the critical areas lacking in our team.

Our midfield is not very mobile, combative and competitive in major elements of technique, skill and creativity.

During the 2019 AFCON finals in Egypt, it was too terrifying to watch our strikers miss golden chances in the box, hence the Bonne issue remains one thorny issue that cannot be left to those guys at ZIFA who look happy to lose games than try to win them.

Then we have our own calamities of the “Nembudzia Syndrome”, that only manifest during tournaments, all these factors adversely affect the quality of our football which at this stage is undeniably struggling to present an impressive picturesque of a fledging team.

Contrasting our national team and Ghana, one can have that natural feeling of being a bogey team that always poses serious problems to the West Africans but, history could not be the deciding factor.

We all know how they struggle against us but when it comes to World Cup football, teams develop that extra cutting edge and ruthlessly approach games differently to try and win at all costs.

The story of Ghana is richer with its array of former players who have played a major part in helping this talent outside their federations, something that we have sought to carbon copy over here in the UK.

The World Cup 2010 in South Africa offers a telling story of how Ghana could have gone far had Luiz Suarez not gone overboard in denying them their first ever knockout stages.

Such is the truthfulness of episodes that make our football differences.

Ghana have been comfortable in using young players during the South African tournament, something that brought them great hope and a good run for the last four years.

Zimbabwe does have young players in top European leagues, but largely ignored and unwanted back home as the administration feels indebted to locally-based players.

When we look back at the last two performances against Somalia and Botswana, the performances during those matches was shockingly poor and by gauging our depth of players that are always thrown in the deep end of things with much less success.

Ghanaian Kwesi Apiah of the World Cup 2010 fame, is also a local coach over here in UK as he has extensive experience with lower semi-professional leagues where I met him at Clapton FC in 2009 in Stratford West Ham.

He scouted widely in Europe to get all their best emerging young talents and it did work.

Contrast that with ZIFA, our template is written on falsehoods and dilemmas that continuously ruin the beautiful game everyday.

We have been told that they don’t need Bonne, Rinemhota, Admiral Muskwe, Kelly Lunga and many other exciting young players that are slowly getting prominence in different leagues in Europe.

Such fallacies are only an ingredient of disaster and horror shows, like what happened in Egypt.

As for South Africa, they have their own bone to chew, but by looking at their displays in Egypt during the 2019 AFCON finals, nothing was convincing and they’re struggling for genuine talent to make them tick at the highest levels.

We won’t underestimate them, but the truth is that they lack quality players in all areas of the pitch.

They’re more of a basic gathering of average players who are either late developed or poorly nurtured in their formative years in their local leagues.

As we decipher on Ethiopia, we can humbly term them a sitting duck that we hardly know of.

They can still pose a threat to any of these three teams and as such, we must never take both matches against them as given.

As we ponder how best to prepare intensively for this tournament, we must be guided by the chaotic planning by ZIFA that defied any logic as the head coach was never given enough resources and support to thoroughly work on all major areas of his team that required fine-tuning.

In this day and age, the objective of qualifying for a World Cup tournament should be premised on wider Government policies and resolutions, not with some confused leadership at ZIFA.

Government should make its pronouncements through the Ministry of Sports and the current Minister, Kirsty Coventry, should take a bold step in opening the agenda to the wider public on how we can harness all our talents abroad (both coaches and players), set up a technical committee made up of business executives like Dr Strive Masiyiwa, Phillip Mataranyika, etc,  who will resourcefully undertake critical planning processes that seek to achieve minimum expectations of success at every level of the journey.

Before we start the first game, we need to know how we can bring all patriots on board and plan robustly without failure, we need all the best brains to be involved forthwith soonest, we must rein-in the chaotic “Nembudzia Syndrome” that’s slowly gathering momentum in the media as they bark about things that they don’t have a clue on.

It’s wishful thinking to hear folks in ZIFA talking out of depth, on delicate and dynamic World Cup qualification activities, when they have failed dismally at every turn.

When Egypt AFCON was our huge test in everything, how we prepare for top tournaments, budgeting approaches, and goal setting procedures, but we witnessed drama and the height of madness as ZIFA chartered a plane for its cartel members and their offspring.

Such an intoxicated leadership should never be allowed to destroy the future of our young fledging talents who can beat any team in this group.

National pride is at stake here and we need to guard this great hope of a first ever World Cup qualification jealously.

We need to set the agenda based on a broader discourse as opposed to allowing a delinquent bandwagon that has brought shame on the beautiful game.

We should not even contemplate the idea that a coach under selection right now has got all our answers. No, we the fans, citizens, active football personnel etc, have something important to share with our nation.

Yes, we desperately need a good coach who will work hard to carry our hopes to qualify, but, most importantly, we must all embrace each other and agree that multitudes have more clout in terms of setting ideas that will make our nation pull through.