By Sheldon Hakata
EVEN if they leave the tournament empty handed, the country’s Under-20 national soccer team, The Young Warriors, have proved there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Their exploits at the ongoing Mopani Copper Mines COSAFA Under-20 Championship in Zambia, which has seen them reach the semi-finals of the tournament, is ample testimony the country’s football is on the right track.
World class performances and confidence on the ball saw them thumping Lesotho 4-nil, before easing to a 2-1 victory over struggling Botswana.
Blessing Nyamuzihwa scored a brace against Lesotho with Tatenda Tumba penning his name on the score sheet.
Triangle’s Delic Murimba leads the charts with three goals.It is a positive step when junior teams do well in such tournaments which offer a platform for new stars and heroes to be born.
However, it is important to note that the main objective of such tournaments is development.
Accordingly, the current performance by The Young Warriors presents an opportunity for coaches to make an accurate assessment of the level of development of the youngsters.
This is so, especially, in terms of progress when they are tested by meeting tougher opponents like Zambia at this stage of the tournament.
We can gauge where we are in terms of development.
We really need to be tested in terms of the calibre and quality of players we have.
This time around, we have seen some good results too.
The performances have been pleasing thus far.
The emphasis is on developing players who are going to make it into the senior national team.
That will be a big plus.
It is not a secret that everyone wants to do well in such tournaments.
Even the whole country would want to see good performances from our developmental side.
Knowing very well how last year’s encounter went when the team did not do well, there has been a marked improvement in terms of progress and development by The Young Warriors.
During the last edition of the tournament, The Young Warriors faltered at the first hurdle.
Such tournaments also offer youths an opportunity to not indulge in such vices like drug abuse, among others.
Government has to appreciate the potential sport has on national unity, peace and development.
We need to take a leaf from countries that have invested heavily in sports academies, infrastructure and even sporting knowledge that has brought amazing results.
South Africa has invested heavily in sporting facilities.
In fact, their stadia are among the best in the world.
Schools should invest in nurturing sporting talent.
Not all students will excel in academics.
That mentality should change to unleash the potential in those students whose talents lie untapped in sport.
Many nations have become synonymous with sporting excellence.
Zimbabwe needs to tap talent from the rural areas too.
Access to sporting facilities and modern methods remain a pipe-dream for the majority in this country.
Most schools in Zimbabwe have dusty pitches catering for a clumsily taught sport.
Zimbabwe should, in the near future, be able to bid and host bigger regional, continental and even global sporting events.
Zimbabwe hosted the All-Africa Games in 1995 and unsuccessfully tried to host the African sporting venture, the African Nations Cup in 2000.
Though we successfully hosted the smaller events like COSAFA, the Regional Five youth athletics, the net effect is, such ventures create employment opportunities.
That, as well, develops a nation’s expertise and experience in hosting big events here.
But hosting these big events demands new and refurbished infrastructure in terms of stadiums, transportation and accommodation. The city, rural councils and towns seem to be anti-sport.
There should be development of infrastructure from the grassroots.
One hopes that private broadcasters, driven by profit margins and the lure of advertising revenue, might help to grow the sport.
We hope it will not be long before live sport coverage and advertising become major drivers of this sport.
The local flagship league, the PSL, has been run professionally for several years now but has been surpassed by South African PSL in terms of revenue generation and organisation.
South Africa has gone on to host a number of notable international sporting events that include the mother-of-all, the FIFA World Cup, in 2010 and are likely to host the 2019 African Nations Cup tournament.
Initially, the tournament was supposed to be hosted by Cameroon but the ouster of Cameroonian and strongman Issa Hayatou from CAF has seen the new leadership withdrawing hosting rights from the West African country.
If we invest heavily in junior football, we can emulate the exploits of the likes of Zambia who stunned the world in June 2017.
Zambia’s Under-20 national team, known as the Junior Chipolopolo, made waves at the FIFA Under-20 World Cup in South Korea where they qualified for the quarter-finals of the tournament.
The teenage footballers transformed themselves with their free-spirited attacking play.
They scored eight goals against Iran and Germany, eliminating these European heavyweights.
This gave the people of southern Africa a reason to be proud of their footballers.
It reminded Zimbabweans of what we have not been doing and what we should do to add value to our national game.
There is no substitute to investing in youth development programmes.
The Zambians have done far much better than us when it comes to that very crucial aspect of football.
As a nation, if we are serious about writing long-term success stories to our credit, we should actually engage in the development of the youth team, especially from grassroots level.
The trio of teenagers like Triangle’s Delic Murimba, Harare City’s Tatenda Tumba and ZPC Kariba’s Blessing Nyamuzihwa of the Zimbabwe youth team that is playing in Zambia will do us good.
We have a group of players who can form the foundation on which we can build a competitive and successful Warriors side in the next few years.