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FOR Ghana, this week has all been about soul-searching, a shattered nation trying to find answers to some difficult questions all centred on why their Black Stars didn’t shine brightly in the Brazilian skyline to illuminate the Land where the statue of Christ the Redeemer towers above everything.
For us, this week has all been about a national coach’s report, a written analysis of failure which some people at zifa foolishly believe is such an important document you would think it was a five-year MASTERPLAN that will be the policy to #BRINGBACKOURLOSTWARRIORS from the wilderness.

For Cameroon, this week has all been about confronting allegations of match-fixing, whose source has since claimed they were based on information twisted by a Germany magazine to suit its agenda, in the fallout of an adventure in Brazil which went horribly wrong for a pride of Indomitable Lions so weak they wouldn’t even frighten a pack of church mice.

For us, this week has all been about the Warriors’ coach report, his written summary of one of our lowest points as a football nation, that humbling loss at the hands of Tanzania, as if without it we cannot find closure, acknowledge that once again we came horribly short and try to find ways to #BRINGBACKOURLOSTWARRIORS from the wilderness.

For Nigeria, this week has all been about what might have been if fate hadn’t been so cruel to their best player on the day, ’keeper Vincent Enyeama, whose only blunder, on a day when his heroics helped him touch the heavens, opened the door for France to find a crucial lead and, grounded a flock of Super Eagles long on determination but markedly short on quality.

For us, this week has all been a journey into the past for a reunion with Gibson Homela, who returns this time as the expert to whom the national coaches’ reports have to be handed so that he provides the guidance on how we move forward — exactly 19 years after his Nations Cup journey as head coach of the Warriors ended in a 0-5 humiliation in Kinshasa.

You got to love Zimbabwe football, quite profoundly romantic isn’t it, life can come to a halt because a coach hasn’t submitted his report about a game we drew, and in the process waved goodbye to the qualifying campaign for a place at the 2015 Nations Cup finals, even before the real qualifiers had begun in earnest?

The Namibians were not at the World Cup, but last weekend their national Under-17 team beat Mozambique 2-1 and, in two weeks time, they will take on Angola in the penultimate round, for a place at the 2015 African Youth Cup in Niger, which also features clashes between South Africa and Tanzania, Zambia and Botswana and DRC and Nigeria.

Of course, that’s alien territory for our forgotten Young Warriors these days, and while the Namibians have spent the week discussing how their teenage footballers, their future, can prepare for the showdown against Angola, all that we have been doing is discussing a coach’s report that hasn’t been submitted to a High Performance Committee.

Next month, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho and South Africa will play in the penultimate round of the 2015 African Under-20 championship, to be held in Senegal, hoping to have a chance to play at the 2015 Fifa World Under-20 Championship in New Zealand in May/June next year.

Of course, that’s alien territory for our forgotten Young Warriors these days and while our regional rivals have spared time this week to think about how they will prepare for those important games for their youth teams, who represent their future, all that we have been talking about is a coach’s report.

You would think the submission of that report is what will free us to plan for the future, not only for our lost Warriors but, crucially, for the Young Warriors who will be key if ever we dream of finding our way out of this wilderness.

We are acting as if it’s the first time we have been confronted by failure, when it comes to the Warriors, and suddenly we pretend that all that is needed for us to ensure that it doesn’t happen again is for the coach, who supervised that doomed mission, to present us with a report that will give us a starting point in our redemption exercise.

Suddenly Homela is acting as if this is the first time that he has confronted failure, when it comes to the Warriors, conveniently forgetting that he was in charge when our attempts to qualify for the ’96 Nations Cup ended with us bottom of the table, whipped 0-5 by the DRC in our final match on April 4 ’95, with him supervising a stunning decline of a team which, in the previous Nations Cup qualifiers, had only been denied a place at the finals by a rare and late header from Kalusha Bwalya.

I’m not sure whether Homela compiled his report about that campaign, and if so whether such compilation helped us to become a better team in the ’98 Nations Cup finals because, as records will show, we once again finished bottom of our three-team group, winning just one of four games, after Sudan had pulled out.

I’m not saying that national team coaches should not compile reports about their campaign, it’s standard procedure, but for us to begin to pretend that the starting point of our soul-searching exercise, as we try to find the road that leads us back into the light, is the presentation of a report about two matches against Tanzania, will be a clear case of living in denial.

We failed to qualify for the 2013 Nations Cup finals, when all we needed was beating two nations, we failed to qualify for the 2012 Nations Cup finals, amid all that self-induced madness in our coaching staff and a zifa board that prayed for the team’s failure because that would give them the licence they needed to oust Norman Mapeza, we failed in our bid for the 2015 Afcon finals after two games.

There are a number of common denominators in our failure — THE BONUS ROWS THAT WERE THERE IN 2010 WERE STILL THERE AHEAD OF THE GAME AGAINST TANZANIA, OUR ALLERGY TO FRIENDLY INTERNATIONALS, TO HELP THE TEAM BOND AWAY FROM THE PRESSURE OF COMPETITIVE GAMES, HASN’T BEEN CURED YET AND, FOR A NATIONAL TEAM, OUR WARRIORS ARE BADLY UNDER-FUNDED.

Even when the players did well to win a substantial amount of money at CHAN, zifa made sure that they treated them as nonentities, mere tools whose blood, sweat and tears could only be used to generate money for the association, because when the earnings finally came, the agreement that had been reached for the team to get half the funds, was thrown into the dust bin.

In my little book, these are the issues that need to be addressed — how do we search for the best talented teenage players in the country, the Under-17s and Under-19s, how do we get these players to meet and get into camp under good coaches on a regular basis, how do we get them to play friendlies against those teams playing in the African Youth Championship qualifiers?

How do we get funding for our national teams, without having to rely on Cuthbert Dube’s pockets, how do we ensure that the next time the players are in camp there won’t be protests, for allowances, on the eve of the match, how do we restore the bond of trust between the players and the association that the next time they strike an agreement it won’t be thrown into the dustbin?

These things, in my little book, are more important than spending weeks talking about a coach’s report that we seem to have turned into a priceless document that will provide us with the beginning, and then the end, of how we must pluck ourselves out of the quagmire that we find ourselves in today.

A Keshi Report That Will Suit Gorowa
The Big Boss, Steve Keshi, turned Nigeria into African champions, for the first time in 19 years, and took them to the second round of the World Cup in Brazil where, until Enyeama finally buckled and helped France get the breakthrough, were very much in the contest for a quarter-final place.

The early injury to his midfield star, Agenyi Onazi, meant that he lost one of his main pillars in this big match and as we have seen, again and again at this World Cup, one man might not make a team but he can make a big difference.

But Keshi isn’t a happy man, even against a background where he has had more success than any coach of the Super Eagles and, unlike Clemens Westerhof who had the luxury of having a galaxy of footballers with talents made in heaven, the Big Boss has had to do it the hard way with a squad short on genuine talent.

After his final World Cup match, Keshi announced that he was done with the Super Eagles, a team that has taken a lot out of him in the past two years he actually looks like a shell of the bouncy Big Boss fellow who towered above everyone before he took this difficult job.

I read Keshi’s interview with SuperSoccer in which he spoke from the heart about the challenges he has faced in leading the Super Eagles, the politics that have poisoned the environment in which he has worked and a Football Association that wasn’t there for him when he needed their support.

Reading through that interview, I got the feeling that Keshi was giving his report, not only about the World Cup, where the Super Eagles were one of just two African nations to qualify for the second round, but about the 2013 Nations Cup, where they won the title, and the turbulence that kept rocking their plane throughout this journey.

And, if this was Keshi’s report, then he also appeared to be writing one for Gorowa, without knowing it, and maybe Gibson Homela and his HPC can pick something from it and use some of the stuff in whatever they are doing which, hopefully will help to #BRINGBACKOURLOSTWARRIORS.

What Keshi Said In His Interview
“I am done. I have finished my assignment with the team. I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF ALL THE POLITICS AND GAMES AND INTRIGUES OF HANDLING THE NATIONAL TEAM.”

What Gorowa Would Probably Say In His Report
“The easy option for me would have been to say that I am done, I have finished my assignment with the team. I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF ALL THE POLITICS AND GAMES AND INTRIGUES OF HANDLING THE NATIONAL TEAM.”

What Keshi Said In His Interview
“I really wish I could have had the players longer but due to the European season, it was not possible. We had only about two weeks and three friendly matches which, in all sincerity, are not nearly good enough to get the players in a state that we wanted to have them by the start of the World Cup.”

What Gorowa Would Probably Say In His Report
“I really wish I could have had the players longer but after the PSL leadership declined my request for the weekend games, leading to the home tie against Tanzania to be postponed, it was not possible. We had only four days, no friendly matches which, in all sincerity, was not good enough to get the players in a state that we wanted to have them for that match.”

What Keshi Said In His Interview
“People write that I chose some of the players in order to sell them. I laugh. They say that is why I have (taken) players that nobody knows.”

What Gorowa Would Probably Say In His Report
“People write that I chose some of the players in order to market and sell them to South African teams. I laugh. They say that is why I used players that some of them don’t know.”

What Keshi Said In His Interview
“For two-and-half years I have lived in a hotel, I never got an official car. There were not good enough training facilities for the senior national team to train with. Myself and my assistants, especially Daniel Amokachi, we spent our money to buy training cones or whatever we might need. Here my salary has never been regular and I have had to pay my assistant, Valery Houndinou, out of my own pocket.”

What Gorowa World Probably Say In His Report
“For a year I have lived in a hotel in Harare, I got an official car thanks to Norbert. There were not good enough training facilities for the Warriors, I spent my money to buy supper for the team in camp ahead of CHAN. Here my salary has never been regular and I had to pay the fitness expert, I hired for the CHAN camp, out of my pocket.”

I hope you can see my point Mr Gibson Homela, the same hostile conditions you complained about and blamed for the failure by our Warriors when you were in charge of the team are still there today and, if you are to make any difference, there is more to your job than rumbling about the report of a coach.

But then, one would have expected people who have been there and done it like Charles Mhlauri and Sunday Chidzambwa to be the ones with the competence to form an HPC that one can expect to make a difference, if we are to end our Nations Cup nightmare, and not people who don’t know what it means to take a team to such a tournament.
But, then, this is Zimbabwe football.

The Coach Of a Team That Never Plays
So, Callisto Pasuwa, has been handed the job as coach of the Under-23 national team and, in other countries, that is a very key job, one of the biggest jobs a football coach can get in his country.

The problem with us is that coaching the Under-23 has become the closest thing we can ever get to having a ghost job because, when you think about it, the team never plays a game.

In February 2012, Peter Ndlovu was unveiled as the Under-23 coach but by the time he left to join Sundowns in July last year, one year and five months later, those Young Warriors hadn’t played a game or even assembled for a training camp.

The last game for the Under-23s had come exactly one year earlier when the Young Warriors, then under the guidance of Friday Phiri, lost to South Africa in the All-Africa Games qualifiers.

Those had been their first assignments since 2007 and this means that, in the last seven years, that’s all they have had to play — Botswana, Zambia and South Africa, six games in the All-Africa Games qualifiers.

Now Pasuwa has taken over and, hopefully, the team will play in the qualifiers for the 2015 caf Under-23 championships in the DRC from December 5-19 next year from where three teams will book their place at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.

The team didn’t play in the qualifiers for the London Olympics in 2002 and King Peter, who came to the fore in this team at the ’91 All-Africa Games in Egypt, could only watch and wonder when the same national team didn’t play a game under his watch.

These are the issues we must tackle Mr Gibson Homela.

To God Be The Glory!

Too bad Mexico are gone

Chicharitoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

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