THE Zimbabwe senior men’s national soccer team, the Warriors’ morale sapping elimination by Tanzania in a 2015 African Cup of Nations qualifier on Sunday was a culmination of a cocktail of challenges confronting football in the country.
Are we that bad is the question that many have been asking since the Warriors’ horrific showing on Sunday.
While other sporting disciplines have achieved success over the past few years, it is Zimbabwe’s most popular sport, football, that continues to break the hearts of a success-starved nation.
The latest debacle on Sunday was another painful episode to the country’s growing football failures.
But this is a country which has produced teams like the Zimbabwe Women Golf team which did well in Botswana, the Junior Golf team who finished second at the All-Africa Junior Golf Championship in Zambia and qualified for the prestigious Toyota Junior Golf World Cup which will be held in Japan this month.
Last year, Zimbabwean martial artistes held their own at a major karate meeting when a hastily assembled team harvested a basketful of medals at the World Goju Ryu Karate Championship in South Africa
The girls’ junior team bagged a silver in the grand final.
In athletics, the situation has been the same with our athletes doing wonders in global tournaments.
Equally heartening are the exploits of the boxer Charles Manyuchi who wrote a glorious page for Zimbabwe by being crowned World Boxing Council Welterweight international champion.
This defies all odds coming from the same environment with our desperately disappointing Warriors?
There is no doubt that the buck stops with the Cuthbert Dube-led executive.
The Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) president has presided over the country’s darkest period since he took over the reigns from Wellington Nyatanga in 2010.
So what is wrong with our football?
The following statistics as presented by the country’s leading daily newspaper, The Herald shows a picture of Dube’s disastrous tenure at the helm of ZIFA.
l 2012 African Cup of Nations qualifiers
COACHES:
Norman Mapeza
Madinda Ndlovu
Tom Saintfiet
Here out of six matches played we won two, drew two and lost two.
We duly failed to qualify after finishing third in the four-team group.
l 2013 African Cup of Nations qualifiers
COACH:
Rahman Gumbo
Again we failed to qualify after we drew and lost two matches.
l 2014 World Cup qualifiers
COACHES:
Rahman Gumbo
Deiter Klaus Pagels
As usual the result was the same with the Warriors losing four of their six matches while we drew in the other two.
Disappointingly we anchored our group.
l 2015 African Cup of Nations qualifiers
COACH:
Ian Gorowa
We were expected to qualify, but again we failed after we drew in one and lost the away match we played.
The question therefore is where is Dube taking us?
That he is not the right man for the job has already been proven by his shocking incompetence at Premier Service Medical Aid Society where he was the group chief executive officer.
Dube whose hefty salary of about US$ 230 000 rocked the country allowed himself and other top executives at the company to gobble funds in salaries that clocked US$1 million a month at a time the group was saddled with debts of US$38 million.
ZIFA has also been in huge debts amounting to US$5 million.
With the Warriors now out of international football for at least two years, the vacuum could have given the nation the chance to groom young talent, but the Young Warriors are also out of international football as they are serving a three-year ban after the Under-20s and Under-17s failed to fulfil their African Youth Cup fixtures.
That the Warriors would down their blunt tools on the eve of a crucial encounter shows how desperate our situation is.
How a team that showed chronic lack of trust in its leadership as seen by the strike over allowances and bonuses, was expected to produce the desired result still remains a mystery.
As an avid football follower, this reporter believes that playing for the nation is a platform for players to market themselves, but it becomes tragic when the whole nation is held to ransom by a bunch of a useless coalition of pretenders masquerading as footballers.
I watched in horror as the majority of them failed to sing the national anthem.
What happened to patriotism?
Yes I hear echoes of some saying players don’t eat patriotism, but I was one of the many who witnessed the great Peter Ndlovu putting his nation’s interests first.
There is hope at the end of the day though.
For a start we need collective effort to mobilise resources for ZIFA.
Sponsorship is key in modern football.
Our coaches must be equipped with modern day football techniques.
And most importantly, Dube and crew must do the honourable thing first and resign.
We can’t be that bad.
Let those with ears listen.