insidesport with MICHAEL KARIATI
THE Warriors of Zimbabwe are back home from the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) finals and, just like millions of football fans all across the planet, they will now be glued to their television sets to watch others play.
The Warriors are now spectators in a tournament they participated in after their romance with Afcon 2019 came to an abrupt end following a 4-0 thrashing by the Simbas of the DRC, a team they had previously beaten in the qualifiers, and for that matter in their own backyard.
All sorts of stories have been flying round with regard to the 4-0 humiliation, but the fact that the Confederation of African Football has given the DRC the go-ahead to contest the second-round game against Madagascar, means records will in future show that the Warriors were thoroughly beaten.
It is a sad chapter for a team that promised much, but turned themselves into the punching bags of Group A and bookmakers are having a field day saying: “We told you that this team was not good enough for the challenge.”
Not mentioning Uganda Cranes coach Sebastein Desabre, who soon after the Afcon draw told the whole world that the Zimbabweans would be the whipping boys of Group A and his words finally came true after the Warriors could only manage one point and one goal in the tournament.
It is now a week since the Warriors’ unceremonious exit from the Nations Cup, but football followers are still trying to figure out what hit their team on that day against the Simbas when the Zimbabweans were reduced to playing secondary school soccer.
For the players themselves, it will probably take much longer to nurse that gushing wound, but the scar that will remain will be a permanent reminder of the humiliation of the 4-0 defeat, and their early elimination.
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In fact, this crop of Warriors will go down in history as the worst Zimbabwean team at the Afcon finals, surpassing Kalisto Pasuwa’s class of 2017 who also picked up a single point, but managed to score three goals compared to the 2019 Warriors who only saw the goal once in three matches and conceded six themselves — an average of two goals without reply per game.
It is a fact that those at the Zimbabwe Football Association (Zifa) will try to avoid looking themselves in the mirror, but would rather sacrifice the coaches, forgetting that they are the ones who played a huge part in Zimbabwe’s disastrous campaign.
In other countries, the results in Egypt, and the circus that went on with it, would have resulted in the whole football federation resigning or being sacked, but not in Zimbabwe where those in power want to hang onto it forever even if things are not going the right way.
With the way things are right now, it would be advisable for Zifa president Felton Kamambo and his board to step down because nobody in football in all the four corners of the country is going to take them seriously or give them respect in the wake of the 2019 Afcon debacle.
As demanded by the Sports and Recreation (SRC) on Thursday, the football association needs to explain what happened to the US$316 000 that came from the Confederation of African Football for the Warriors.
The nation is also awaiting answers on how much was raised by the Warriors Fundraising Committee, and what the money was used for.
Zifa have also not explained as to how some of their relatives found themselves on the plane to Egypt at the association’s expense when the players who do the job on the field of play were crying for their payment
The SRC has hinted they will investigate the whole Egypt debacle. The question is: What is there to investigate when it is evidently clear who is to blame for the whole mess?
Countless commissions of inquiry into football and countless investigations have been ordered by the SRC into the running of the game, but nothing has come out of it. Examples are the Justice Paddington Garwe commission into the management of football of 1997, and the 2015 Obadiah Moyo-led Commission into the administration of the game where a lot of money was spent but no action was taken.
Should the SRC be serious this time around, then the investigations should not begin and end with the Egypt adventure. It should also go down to the Zifa Council where over the years allegations of corruption have been raised but nothing has been done about it.
The trip to Egypt should be the starting point of the investigations. Whatever the case is, football should be the ultimate winner. Whether Kamambo stays on or somebody else takes over, there are critical issues that need urgent attention, most important of which is the post of national team coach.
Chidzambwa has played his part and for that matter successfully. Two Afcon appearances and four Cosafa Cup titles ought to be recognised as perfection in any sporting language and now is the time for Mhofu to hand over the baton to another coach.
The truth is that Chidzambwa, based on his success with the national team, was and is head and shoulders above all the local coaches around and if a local handler is to be appointed, it has to be on interim basis while the nation seeks a foreign coach as is the case with other successful African football teams.
The SRC has decided to get involved in football matters and they too should be involved in making sure that the government pays the salary of the national coach as happens in other top football-playing African countries.
Just around the corner are the qualifiers for the 2021 Afcon and the 2022 World Cup finals, and now is not too early to start building for those important assignments.
The disaster in Egypt should bring a new beginning to Zimbabwean football.
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