Vacancies in Warriors dressing room

Sport
WARRIORS coach Ian Gorowa has said he will give every Zimbabwean player an opportunity to prove their mettle in the national team.

WARRIORS coach Ian Gorowa has said he will give every Zimbabwean player an opportunity to prove their mettle in the national team.

By Brian Nkiwane

Gorowa and his trusted lieutenants, Kalisto Pasuwa, Jairos Tapera, Mkhuphali Masuku and Richard Tswatswa took over the reins from the German Klaus Dieter Pagels, who had adopted a hardline stance against certain players, saying they could not fit in his tiki-taka football philosophy.

Players such as Kaizer Chiefs hardman Willard Katsande had been left out from the Warriors, as well as his club-mate Kingstone Nkhata. But Gorowa has since recalled them.

The former Black Rhinos and Dynamos striker has so far managed to bring back smiles to the faces of football-loving Zimbabweans by qualifying for the African Championships (Chan), after beating continental powerhouse Zambia on a 1-0 goal aggregate in the final qualifying round.

The two teams had settled for a nil-all draw in Harare before the Warriors stunned Chipolopolo 1-0 in their backyard.

Last week, the Warriors beat South Africa 2-1 in Johannesburg in an international friendly match, keeping Gorowa’s away record intact. In an interview with Standardsport after the Bafana Bafana match in South Africa, Gorowa said all stakeholders must come on board and assist in building a strong national team.

He added that the technical team was ready to give all the players plying their trade in all the corners of the world an equal chance, but added that fans should not rush them into doing so.

“I know a lot of our fans are worried about the future of some of our players who are plying their trade in Europe and other leagues. I would like to give every player a chance to prove himself. The Warriors dressing room must have an open-door policy. If the player is Zimbabwean and people think he can play for the Warriors, we will give him a chance to prove himself,” Gorowa said.

Added Gorowa: “When we started we were trying hard to qualify for Chan, thereby limiting ourselves to using locally-based players. For now, I think we have done a lot with locally-based players. We managed to try a number of them, with most of them showing me that they can deliver. The friendly match against South Africa gave me the chance to look at South African-based players. The next step is to asses players in other leagues across the world.”

But the Warriors gaffer said people must be patient as he tries to revive the team’s fortunes.

“I will not be rushed to do this, we need more time. What people should know is that we are going back to start preparing for Chan finals set for South Africa in January, so we will shelve other programmes for a while. This means that we might be working with locally-based players for the better part of our preparations, with foreign-based players coming in maybe in friendly matches.”

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