Zimpapers Logo

Tadious Manyepo

Sports Reporter

FORMER Warriors captain Willard Katsande has revealed that he was on the verge of being flashed out of the Ajax Cape Town system before he caught the eye for Kaizer Chiefs during a national team assignment at Rufaro.

Katsande had been struggling to settle at Ajax Cape Town after joining from Gunners and he was about to be offloaded when he starred for the Warriors in a 2-0 international friendly win over Zambia in August 2011.

In fact, the ex-Highway man had been hinted that he would have to look for alternative clubs upon his return from that assignment against Zambia.

With Ajax Cape Town maintaining their stance, Katsande impressed Kaizer Chiefs’ boss Bobby Motaung who was at Rufaro when Zimbabwe nailed Zambia.

Motaung didn’t think twice after seeing the midfielder operating the engine room with authority.

And the now retired footballer, who notched 326 appearances for Kaizer Chiefs in a successful decade-long stay at the Soweto giants, is scheming ways to pay back the Warriors including to be their coach one day.

“I am gonna be a coach. My aim is to coach the Warriors because I want to give back to them. I am where I am because of the national team.

“I owe my success at Kaizer Chiefs to the national team. I will tell you that Ajax Cape Town wanted to release me but I was called to play for the Warriors in a friendly against Zambia,” said Katsande.

“Kaizer Chiefs boss Bobby Motaung was there and he signed me immediately and I stayed there for 10 or so years.

“Had I not been called for the national team, that was the end of me. Ajax Cape Town had told me to come for national duty and make a decision thereafter as they said they didn’t want to exhaust their foreign slots.

“Imagine the stress that I carried but the Warriors gave me the platform and after playing well, boom, my life changed.

“I have to give back to them. I will coach the national team. I don’t know when but I will”.

Katsande is currently in the country and he has been following some Castle Lager Premier Soccer League matches.

He watched the tense tie between Dynamos and ZPC Kariba at the National Sports Stadium last Sunday and he was left a disappointed lot.

Actually Katsande is concerned with the standards of the game in the country, which he said were going down.

He said the lack of quality in the domestic league was discouraging South African Premiership teams from signing as many local players as they used to some few years ago.

“It’s (standards of the game) very worrisome as a football person. As a nation we have to worry as to why we are failing to produce players to play across the Limpopo.

“Don’t tell me it’s because of money, that doesn’t make any sense because we know that South African teams are always looking for Zimbabwean players but at the moment we have lost the finesse and the quality,” said Katsande.

“We need to look at ourselves and ask ourselves tough questions. Are we doing things properly?

“Let’s look at our archives. At some point we were 23 Zimbabwean players playing top-flight football in South Africa but now tell me how many are there?

“I think there are only two or three commanding playing positions. What does that tell you? Obviously we are not doing something right.

“I think we need to go back to the grassroots. Let primary and high schools have competitive tournaments. Let’s have those junior tournaments. Let the kids have something to play for.

“We seem to be concerned about a player when they reach the age of 23. But do we know what they have been doing when they were 10 years old?

“Did they get to be taught the right things? People out there and their teams know Zimbabweans as hard workers and talented but we are not doing the right things that’s why we now have few players making the grade outside the country”.

He said everyone has a role to play in the resuscitation of the country’s football.

“We certainly need to revisit our archives and see how we used to produce quality.

“We have to catch them young and give them the right things to do.“Remember the likes of Eddie Mashiri used to play for Dynamos while he was still a school boy and we were going crazy about it as kids. But now tell me, can you take a 17-year-old to go and play for Dynamos, it’s obviously impossible because the kids are not developed in the right way.

“It’s not their problem but it is the system which is not developing them the right way.

“Everyone has a role to play in terms of developing the game right from the grassroots.

“You can bring Mourinho or Pep Guardiola here but without a solid development philosophy, they will still fail”.

Katsande, who is now into fashion business said if the current trend continues, Zimbabwe risk having no player in the South African league in the not-so-distant future.

“For us to have a good national team and a competitive league in 10 years’ time, we should start doing the right things now.

“We have lost the spark. We need to have more players going to Europe, more players going to South Africa and so forth. If we are not careful, very soon we will have zero exports.

“People in South Africa ask me every time to bring good players from Zimbabwe but honestly I don’t have to lose credibility for bringing them raw players”.