Fans chased away Chunga from CAPS United — Jere

Sport
FOUR-time champions, CAPS United, are in turmoil. The club is four points off the drop zone with 19 games having been played. Having fired the entire coaching department led by Irish coach, Sean Connor a few weeks ago, and replacing them with Taurai Mangwiro, there seems to be no respite at the Green Machine, as […]

FOUR-time champions, CAPS United, are in turmoil. The club is four points off the drop zone with 19 games having been played. Having fired the entire coaching department led by Irish coach, Sean Connor a few weeks ago, and replacing them with Taurai Mangwiro, there seems to be no respite at the Green Machine, as the team has gone on a record seven straight defeats in the league. Sports Reporter, Albert Marufu (AM), talked to the team’s co-director, Farai Jere (FJ).

AM: CAPS United have gone on a record seven-match losing streak, what is the problem at the club? FJ: Hopefully this coming weekend (today) we are going to win. This is not the first time that this has happened at CAPS United. I think we are overemphasising the crisis at the club. In 2003 we were in the same situation before we came back the following year. Even when the team was under CAPS Holdings, it happened, which prompted the company to sell the club to my partner Twine Phiri. Last year, we also had the same scenario when we lost six games under Takaendesa Jongwe. The previous season we had five consecutive losses under Luke Masomere, so we will be out of this. You know CAPS United is a big brand and it attracts a lot of interest and attention when things like this happen, but we will come right.

  AM: Mr Jere, what would you attribute the consecutive losses to? FJ: All along we have been talking of CAPS United playing brilliant football and they were only failing to convert the chances they created. Out of all the matches we have played to date, we only played badly against Chicken Inn and when we played at Gwanzura against Dynamos last week. If you look into history, Dynamos was once beaten 7-0 by the same CAPS United and this is a mere 3-0 loss. We do not want to raise alarm when it is not there, there is no crisis at the club at all.

  AM: CAPS United finished strongly last season under Lloyd Chitembwe, but you gave him a new boss in Sean Connor at the start of this season. What was the strategy behind that? FJ: People always forget history but it turns to repeat itself. This is not the first time that this has happened at the club. Bambo (Moses Chunga) came and took the team out of relegation the first time he joined us. We then gave him the team the following season, but we started off badly. People are just looking at what happened last year. Jostein Mathuthu also joined the team and took us out of relegation, but the following season we started badly.

We had to give the team to someone else. This has been happening all along, so we want to look at why we are having a bad start every season and then finish off strongly. We know we are going to survive relegation. We are not even surprised because this trend has been happening to this team even when it was under CAPS Holdings. Even during the time of Method Mwanjali in 2006, we had the same situation.

The team started in the relegation zone but finished the season strongly. I think the worst season we have had as CAPS United was in 2007 when we survived relegation on the last day of the season after beating Highlanders 4-1. It was not a guarantee that if we had started with Lloyd and without Sean Connor this year, we would have been in a better position.

  AM: What do you think of the decision to bring in Connor in the first place and how did you get him? FJ: We got to know about him through a CAPS United fan who is based in Europe, but unfortunately he did not meet the expectations.This team wants a coach who has a grip on the players.

If you look at a team like CAPS United, our biggest problem is the remuneration which we give these players. Compared to other teams in the local league, their salaries are quite high, so we need someone who can manage them to make sure that they do not lose concentration. In the past we have had people like Moses Chunga and Chitembwe who have proved that they can handle them. The situation we are in, is their problem and I am not saying this for the first time. Even during the time of Method and Nyasha Mushekwi, the club was fighting relegation while these guys were living lavish lives. When they enjoy their money out there, they forget that they still have to perform in the field of play.

Should we starve them so that they perform? I hear people saying, look at Shabanie where players are not being paid, but the club is doing well. We are trying to change the lives of these players, but they are not repaying us. FC Platinum and CAPS United are the two best paying teams in the country, but look where we are on the log. Our players are just not honest. This is not an administrative problem, but our players who are not organised. They are giving us the wrong message, that we do not have to pay them in order for them to perform. That is why we need a coach who has a grip on them.

  AM: Is Taurai Mangwiro the best guy to instill discipline in the players? FJ: Taurai Mangwiro is the best qualified coach in the country at the moment. He went to the same school that Charles Mhlauri went in Germany. If we are saying Mhlauri was the best ever coach to coach CAPS United and we have a guy with the same qualification, then surely that person should be given the chance. I have confidence that he will bring back the good old days.

  AM: What do you think of the team’s fans? FJ: The fans have been our biggest let-down. The only time we started strongly was last year when Moses Chunga was the coach. He had helped us survive relegation and was doing well at the club. CAPS United was five points behind the team which was on top of the log; he was fired by the fans. This was because he had lost to Highlanders in a Cup game in Gweru. It was a BancABC Cup match and they chased him away. From that time, we went for six consecutive losses under (Takaendesa) Jongwe. So we are confronted by a number of problems; we have executive problem, player problem and supporters problem.

It is high time we fought for one goal. The biggest let-down for this club has been its own fans. We need them, but they should also look at the role which they are playing in destroying the club. I can tell you, as far as I am concerned, we should have won the championship last year. We were in the top three when they started fighting Moses Chunga and Dynamos (the eventual champions) were way behind us.

We then went on to lose six consecutive games and Dynamos won the ground and they eventually won the league. Every team goes through a dry spell, but we did not give Chunga a chance when we had started off strongly. That was our chance to win the league and we had stated that in Chunga’s contract. Every year that we have started off strongly from 1996, 2004 and 2005, we won the league, but this time we did not give Chunga a chance.

  AM: Is there any chance that Chunga or Lloyd Chitembwe might bounce back to the club? FJ: No. Many people do not understand the way we operate. We try to give each and every coach who comes to CAPS United a chance. With time, these guys will take us out of relegation. These guys have just been in charge for three games and we should also understand that they have been coaching clubs that are smaller than CAPS United.

  AM: Connor says he had not failed in his mandate to finish in the top four? FJ: (Laughs) You can actually see where this whole thing was going. It would have been madness for us to wait until that late. We know our local league. It is quite competitive towards the end as teams battle against relegation and fight for the championship. We could not wait until it was too late because out of 16 games, he had won four. What are the chances that he could win the last games? We are not talking of one or two games here.

We are talking of someone who, out of 16 games only wins four. That record is pathetic if you look at the CAPS United standards. You cannot lose matches against Buffaloes at home and expect to perform miracles. Those are crucial points which Connor and company should have bagged. They were clueless as they kept losing matches in the same fashion. Coaches do not want to accept that they have failed.

That guy was getting his salary and he is still getting it for non-performing. So you see clubs having problems giving these coaches long-term contracts. Their (coaches) contracts favour them because even if you fire him for poor results, you still have to pay him till the expiry of his contract.

  AM: For how long are you going to pay Connor? FJ: We will be paying him until December. He had a performance-based contract, which was renewable at the end of the year, on condition that he gets a work permit from the Immigration department.