The Sunday Mail
Langton Nyakwenda
Sports Reporter
IT was a brutal assessment of the country’s junior football development system that touched off a storm.
It sparked a raging debate that has dominated social media platforms, including WhatsApp groups for prominent football personalities.
National Under-20 coach Tonderai Ndiraya sparked it all when he gave his assessment of the calibre of the country’s junior footballers, after the Young Warriors’ 0-2 loss against Mozambique in a COSAFA Championships group game at the Wolfson Stadium in Port Elizabeth, South Africa on December 6.
The Young Warriors, who had surrendered a 2-1 lead against South Africa in the dying minutes of their opening group game, won 4-1 against Lesotho in the final match, but that was not enough to see them through to the semi-finals of the tournament.
“We just need to go back and develop our players, some of the basic things are lacking which cannot be taught at this platform,” said Ndiraya, soon after the Young Warriors’ loss to Mozambique.
The Under-20s demise came a few days after the national Under-17 team was disqualified for fielding over-aged players at the COSAFA tournament held in Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa, in November.
Consequently, Zimbabwe will miss the next two Africa Under-17 Cup of Nations and resultantly the next FIFA Under-17 World Cup.
The catastrophe in South Africa has ignited fresh scrutiny of the country’s football development system.
A number of academy representatives caucused in Harare a few days ago to diagnose the problems afflicting junior football and came up with a paper that is now before ZIFA.
Most of the academies want ZIFA to put in place a clear system for selection of junior national team players.
The general feeling is that Zimbabwe has immense talent at junior level, but ZIFA are not injecting resources to engage the right coaches for early athlete development.
Legends Academy director of coaching, Farai Dhliwayo was scathing in his assessment of the prevailing junior football challenges.
“The biggest problem we have is that we have a national football association that in itself is anti-football development.
“ZIFA get money from FIFA through the FIFA ‘Forward’ Development programme. These funds are meant for football development, but the question is do ZIFA give out any money?
“Our academy is registered with ZIFA and every year I pay registration fees. I have been doing this for the past six years, but I have never been given anything, not even a soccer ball from ZIFA,” Dhliwayo said.
ZIFA have access to US$1,5 million annually from FIFA for specific football projects such as new facilities, women’s and youth development.
ZIFA technical director, Wilson Mutekede, did not respond to questions sent to him on what the association was doing to aid academies.
Dhliwayo, however, also feels the absence capacity building courses is stalling development.
“The other problem is on coaching. You need to develop your junior development coaches, but we have not seen any CAF courses in Zimbabwe for the past five years.
“They will tell you CAF is changing curriculum and so forth, but there are courses across the world that are equivalent to CAF requirements.
“The money they get from FIFA for football development should be used to bring in instructors to conduct courses,” said Dhliwayo.
Dhliwayo feels the choice of junior national team coaches has pegged back development.
“ZIFA is anti-development because they are appointing Premier Soccer League coaches for developmental teams. There is a huge difference between a PSL coach and a junior football coach.
“At PSL level, the coaches are dealing with finished products and there is a win-win mentality.
“It’s a catastrophe to have a PSL coach who is paid 12 months by his club and only spends two weeks with the junior national team.
“There is also a conflict of interest there. The bosses who pay his salary at his club might also influence the selection process.
“If the ZIFA technical director cannot see this then we have a problem. The PSL coach is busy with his club for 12 months and that’s why you hear him say we didn’t have enough time to prepare for these youth tournaments.
“If we can have Loga (Zdravko Logarusic), who is not attached to any club at senior national team, why then should we not do the same for the junior teams.
“Ever since ZIFA started introducing PSL coaches at junior level, the results have gone from bad to worse.
“Look at the Under-17s, the last four years have been the worst to the point of disqualification this year.
“We need to have junior football coaches at this level and they need to be trained by a FIFA development coach,” said Dhliwayo.
The national Under-17 team’s slide in the past four years has been alarming.
They finished bottom of Group A with no point from three matches, at the 2017 COSAFA Championships held in Mauritius.
The team, which was under Moses Chunga, scored one and conceded 10 goals, including five in one match against Malawi.
The Young Warriors once again anchored their group at the 2018 edition, with no point from three games, in a group that had Angola, Malawi and Swaziland.
They scored three goals and conceded 10.
ZIFA did not send a team for the 2019 championships, citing economic challenges, although it is alleged politics held sway.
The tournament was staged at a time the feud between Felton Kamambo and his predecessor Philip Chiyangwa, who now heads COSAFA, had reached turned nasty.
The national Under-20 side last won the COSAFA Cup in 2007, under the tutelage of Rodwell Dhlakama.
That team included Knowledge Musona, Khama Billiat, Eric Chipeta, Abbas Amidu and Qadr Amini.
Dhlakama reminisced on the good old days.
“Honestly speaking, we benefited from the structures that were in place,” said Dhlakama.
“There were a number of schools’ tournaments like the M & H national Under-17 which we would follow religiously.
“Each province had a person in charge of football, these would report to the national head in charge of schools’ football.
“We had structures in schools, we had the database of all the players across the country. Even after selecting the national Under-20 team, we would still play all the 10 provincial select squads just to make sure that no one was left out,” said the Ngezi Platinum Stars coach.
“You also find out that there is a lack of continuity these days. From the team that Moses Chunga took to the Under-17 championships three years ago, who made it into the Under-20?
“Some of the players just disappear along the way, probably because they are not good enough. It now looks like we no longer have talent, but I know talent is out there, only the selection criteria needs to be revisited.
“Look at the players we selected back then, the likes of Ovidy Karuru, Costa Nhamoinesu, Ariel Sibanda, Munyaradzi Diya, Honour Gombami, Obadiah Tarumbwa, they all went on to play Premiership football.
“But, these days, most of the players who play for the national Under-20 fade away,” said Dhlakama.
Junior football development guru, Lloyd “MaBlanyo” Chigowe, attributes the problems to political bickering within the ZIFA corridors.
“The biggest undoing for development was the political shenanigans that saw the dismantling of the Zimbabwe Junior Football League by then ZIFA president Cuthbert Dube’s administration under the guise of a constitutional amendment.
“That was doomsday,” lamented Chigowe, a former national Under-17 gaffer.
“All the 10 provinces would meet for national team selection under the ZJFL. A youth coach, one from the Northern Region, one from the Southern Region, would assist a top-flight coach and not this haphazard modus operandi we have today.”
Chigowe feels Zimbabwe’s junior teams suffered terribly when ZIFA failed to fulfil CAF youths matches leading to a ban from international youth tournaments in 2012.
The axe fell on the country’s youth teams when the Under-20 team failed to fulfil their return leg in Angola in an African Championship qualifier after ZIFA cancelled the trip at the eleventh hour, citing financial constraints.
The Under-17 team also failed to travel for a return leg against Congo, in November 2012, after ZIFA failed to secure airfares.
The ban was, however, lifted in 2015.
“That episode demonstrated a scant appreciation of junior football development. And yet we had a group of immensely talented players.
“The 2012 Under 17’s produced Marshall Munetsi, Tino Kadewere, Stanley Ngala, Tatenda Mkuruva, Carlos Mavhurume and Brett Amidu.
“The U20’s had Knox Mtizwa, the Moyo twins Kelvin and Elvis, Moses Jackson to name a few. I was the Under-17 coach then.
“We became COSAFA specialists and avoided the African jungle where real exposure is obtained. We lost some years.
“The result was felt even at the Under-23 level where the team we entered for the Olympic qualifiers had no exposure at Under-17 and Under-20 level, including the technical team and we were competing against teams that had early exposure.
“We need nationwide junior football structures for wide talent identification and development. The talent is there, let’s just do the simple things correctly not this business of agents agitating and bribing for boys to be selected.
“Let’s cut the cancer!” Chigowe said.
Dreamers Academy owner, Charles Manjera thinks the local junior structure is skewed.
“We still have financial challenges, sometimes transporting the boys to games is an issue. Modern-day training equipment is a challenge. I would say for now we are at 50 percent capacity and we need help from the corporate world to partner academies in crucial areas.
“If everything is structured well then the development of the boys will be on a better level,” said Manjera, a former CAPS United defender.
As the football fraternity scrambles for answers to this perennial curse, there are some who feel the newly-launched Real Betis Academy Zimbabwe project could be the panacea to some of the problems bedevilling the junior game.
The Spanish La Liga side has partnered Gerald Sibanda of Athletes Sphere Management in a project that is tipped to change the face of football development.
Real Betis Academy Zimbabwe conducted its first training session at Heritage School in Harare yesterday.
“We have come in not to compete, but to complement what other academies have been doing. The Real Betis Academy offers young Zimbabwean footballers a platform to showcase the talent and position themselves for a link with La Liga side Real Betis. The training equipment has now arrived in Zimbabwe and our head coach Murape Murape is now in possession of the training methodology sent from the director of coaching at Real Betis,” said Sibanda.
