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Philip Zulu in LEEDS, England
OUR worst fears have come to pass after what we witnessed in Ethiopia yesterday, as Zimbabwe crashed to a shock 0-1 defeat in a 2022 World Cup qualifier.

It was a must-win contest after our poor showing against Bafana Bafana in the first match of this campaign,for a place in Qatar.

But, somehow, we conspired to hand Ethiopia all three points, leaving us stuck at the bottom of Group G.

Of course, all the signs had told us not to expect a lot in this match even though, driven by patriotism, and the love of our team, we always have to expect the best.

What is now clear is that our national game is imploding right in front of us and the problem, it appears, we all can’t do anything to stop the rot.

If we raise our voices to try and clean the mess, we are accused in interfering in the running of an association which appears to belong more to Zurich than to Zimbabwe.

We needed a straight win, nothing less and, against Ethiopia, we should have fancied our chances of doing that.

After all, some of our key players went to Kinshasa, not so long ago, and beat the DRC, in a 2019 AFCON qualifier.

If a team can win in Kinshasa, why should going to Ethiopia appear such a tough mission?

Is this how horrible we have become?

We cried recently that winning has become a taboo, for our Warriors.

Now, a new narrative is that keeping possession, and passing the ball to each other, has also become taboo, under Zdravko Logarusic.

Yesterday, we witnessed something close to madness, every time Divine Lunga got the ball, in his half and, boom, he kept kicking it forward, sending it to whom it might concern.

It’s now taboo, for us to build play from the back, because the majority of our players are not confident, when in possession of the ball.

They also lack the confidence to construct positive play, in each third of the game.

We are fast becoming the laughing stock of world football and, unfortunately, it seems no one cares. Every day has become one when we have to mourn the death of our national game.

Where is our football leadership, why don’t we hear them tell us why our Warriors have become such punching bags, under their watch? What has changed, in the last three years, turning our national team into something which is this weak and hopeless?

Who hired this coach who has been allowed to use us, as his experiment, as he tests football at this level?

Who are those experts, who recommended Loga, on the basis that he had taken Sudan to their place, at the CHAN finals?

If that is an achievement, why was Ian Gorowa forced out, from his job as Warriors coach, when he had finished fourth, at the same tournament?

It’s no longer about Loga.

It’s about a system that is not working in our national interests and, when the Warriors are failing, surely what else are our football leaders delivering? This damage to our national game will affect all our foreign-based players, as their confidence will be low, when they go back to their bases. Fourteen games, and just one win, surely it can’t get any worse.