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Phillip Zulu-Special Correspondent

SENEGAL’S Lions of Teranga roared to victory in the African Cup of Nations final on Sunday in Yaounde, Cameroon, as they beat a well-managed defensive Egyptian team which seemed to rely more on Mo Salah’s predatory instincts to score goals. 

Sadio Mane’ s last spot-kick goal sent Senegalese fans and players into a wild celebration in confirming their new status as the new African football champions in Cameroon on Sunday. 

This victory has brought so many questions and debates as to how they managed to maintain their self-belief and confidence in such a long stretch of time after missing out on two occasions. 

Their player quality base is an envy to every nation out there and key fundamental things stick out:

 Their local structures of developing junior and youth football are functional, comprehensive and intensively progressing. 

 Their senior coaches are true professionals who value their personal worth and national interests, hence their selection process is less fraught with cartels and mafia gangsters conniving to capture their national football federation. 

 Aliou Cisse, the head coach’s seriousness in further coach education continuous further learning and taking full responsibilities of the choice of the selected players and the results that come along. 

 The fusion of the diaspora talents and local player base is professional in every aspect of top-flight football management, only the best players get chosen.

 Their seriousness to detail, mixing the emerging talents with top players like Mane, Koullibay, Gana etc, speaks volumes of their eagerness to continue building from the foundations of their junior and youth structures. 

 Their local league is ranked highly under FIFA hence their players attract a decent transfer valuation when they get signed abroad. 

 Their national football federation is financially stable as they receive remittances of the 6% development fees under FIFA regulations that guide such transfers. 

Contrast our tragic situation in Zimbabwe with Senegal’s rise from obscurity, it’s increasingly terrifying how we seem to have perfected the art of fatuity as our football collapses under capture of cartels. The antidote of our perils is to simply observe and marvel what Senegal has done over a long period of time to achieve this success and produce young players in their local systems. 

Guided by what Senegal has achieved so far, we have to:

 Encourage and pursue a national debate in Parliament to investigate how our academic curriculum is rigidly biased against psychomotor skills and abilities that are non-academic. 

 Engage all stakeholders to participate in a new chapter that formulate how our sport will be developed. 

 Set higher standards and criteria to recruitment of quality applicants whose pedigree and professionalism is beyond any doubt. 

 The current technical structures at ZIFA are in ruins as depicted by the recent chaotic poor player selection and the use of over 30’s, where most teams invited the majority of their young players. 

 New ideas should be allowed to tackle our rot by removing all the deadwood in the technical department and have a new set-up. 

 Cultivate more streams of engagement with the diaspora talent base that is one of the fastest emerging talent in European top leagues. 

The Diaspora Initiative towards developing young Zimbabweans started in 2010 when I applied for the national team coaching position and presented a five-year development plan which I had to implement over here in the UK through intensive Futsal related programmes and a fusion of the local junior grassroots leagues. 

Zimbabwe has more than 20 youngsters in the EPL structures, plus many more juniors in the academies than most countries in Africa. We can compete with Ghana, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire and Algeria but, the big difference between us and all these teams is that they use their foreign nationals and we don’t because of a captured system that has become dangerous to our national image and aspirations to our young people.