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THE Warriors are back home, after their worst CHAN finals campaign in history, where they ended up without a point, and just a goal, to their credit.

Under the guidance of coach Zdravko Logarusic, for the first time at a major finals, the Warriors struggled to make an impression, were largely disjointed as a unit, and kept playing second fiddle to their opponents.

A 0-1 defeat to the hosts, in the opening game, was not a true reflection of the way our boys found themselves chasing shadows, for long periods in the match, with goalkeeper Ariel Sibanda working overtime to keep his team in the game.

While Sibanda was at fault, in the goal which we conceded, as he failed to read its flight, he put in a good shift, throughout the match, as his defence kept gifting the opponents with some fine chances.

That Loga rang the changes, by sending about half of the men who had featured in that game to the bench, and introducing new faces in his starting XI, showed that even the coach was not happy with what he saw.

But, rather than improve our performance, in the second match against Burkina Faso, the changes appeared to have weakened the team even further and a 1-3 defeat, again, was not a true reflection of our opponents’ dominance.

Needing a win, in the final match against the Eagles of Mali, at least, for the sake of restoring our battered pride, the Warriors again came short, conceded an early goal and failed to find the character to force a draw. At the end of the group matches, we found ourselves bottom of the overall standings, the worst performance by the 16 teams who were in Cameroon, the only one not good enough to have picked a point at the tournament.

Even Namibia, who failed to score in all their three matches, ended in a better overall position than us as they stole a point, in their final match against Zambia, to at least justify their adventure at the tournament.

The results from Cameroon have divided the domestic football family with some arguing, with some justification, that this mission was always going to be a tough one for the team given the majority of the players spent over a year without kicking a ball in a competitive game.

This camp has also been arguing that it is unfair for Loga to be judged on those three matches when the coach was forced to just pick players, on the basis of their profile, without the benefit of having seen them in action in the domestic league.

These people have pointed to the way Thomas Tuchel, the new Chelsea coach, who went with experience, in his first game in charge of the Blues on Wednesday, simply because he had just trained his team for just one day.

The German, in his explanation after the goalless draw against Wolves, said he will only be able to come up with the best players, whom he believes deserve to be in the starting XI, after weeks of training sessions with his crew.

Others, though, believe Loga had enough supporting act, in the form of his assistants, Lloyd Chitembwe and Tonderai Ndiraya, to get a good idea of the best possible players, who could represent this country, and either chose to ignore their input or had the arrogance to try and prove them wrong.

It’s very unlikely that either Chitembwe or Ndiraya, given the years they have spent in the trenches of domestic football, would have chosen to take someone like Tawanda Nyamandwe to try and lead the line for the Warriors at the CHAN finals.

They know that the best days of the 38-year-old are well, and truly, behind him and, even at his best, about a decade ago, he didn’t have the pedigree to be trusted with being the spearhead of the attack for any Warriors side.

This brings a disturbing issue, for the Warriors, with questions being asked as to whether the assistant coaches are playing any role, in terms of shaping the team, or have just been reduced to people who just pick the balls in training while Loga calls all the shots.

There is no doubt that Loga appears to be a dominant character, one who believes that he is the be-all-and-end-all of everything, when it comes to making decisions for the Warriors, even in an environment where he doesn’t really know the players.

It’s an area that ZIFA should address quickly, with the AFCON qualifiers coming soon in March, and we can’t afford a replay of the disaster that we saw in Cameroon.

If Loga doesn’t feel comfortable with working with Chitembwe and Ndiraya, he should tell his employers, and they will decide whether they retain the coach, or replace him, while retaining his assistants.

We need a united front, among our coaches, and the signs that we have been seeing doesn’t give us that comfort.

We are also tired of reminding ZIFA of their obligations and it’s clear that our football is going downhill, and at an alarming pace, given that we also came out of the AFCON finals, in Egypt, where we had our worst show at the tournament.

These are signs that something is not right, in the way our national game is being administered, and since this game belongs to all of us, we just can’t fold our arms and let it be run into the ground by someone, or some people, who don’t have the capacity to administer it well.

Something has to give.