BY MICHAEL KARIATI
ZDRAVKO Logarusic is once again at the centre of debate whether he should stay on as Warriors coach for the Afcon finals or should be asked to leave in favour of another Warriors’ handler.
That is the cruelty of football where one day’s result can swing opinion in favour of or against and Zimbabwe’s 2-0 defeat to Zambia’s Chipolopolo has created too many doubters over Loga.
What is ironic is that only last week the same football family was glorifying Loga for “leading” Zimbabwe to the Afcon finals following that memorable 1-0 win over the Zebras of Botswana.
Now some of them are dancing to another tune shouting that Logarusic should not be allowed to handle the Warriors at the Afcon finals contending he is not the best man for the team.
Some have even gone too far, joking around that it is, in fact, the Warriors who are taking Logarusic to the Afcon finals in Cameroon, and not vice-versa.
In fact, from top government officials to the vegetable vendor, football lovers are in agreement that if there was a man who should get credit for the Warriors’ Afcon finals journey, then that man should be Joey Antipas.
Statistics show that both Antipas and Logarusic picked up four points, but the big difference being that Antipas’ four points came from only two matches while Logarusic’s four points came from four games.
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All in all, out of a total of six points, Antipas dropped two points, while Logarusic dropped eight points and collected far much less than half of the overall total of the 12 points at stake.
However, it would be unfair to judge Logarusic from the three matches he lost to Cameroon, Burkina Faso and Mali at the Chan finals. The question is: What was the coach supposed to do with players who had not kicked a ball for more than a year?
Although the issue is not about Antipas and Loga, there is also no guarantee that Mafero would have fared better at Chan or whether he would have picked four or more points in the Afcon matches which were finished off by Loga.
While the debate about Loga’s future continues to dominate the football corridors, the fact is that Loga was given the task of taking the Warriors to the Nations Cup finals and he has done so.
On January 29, 2020, Zifa president Felton Kamambo is on record telling the nation that they had appointed Loga with the specific task of taking the Warriors to the 2021 Afcon finals.
The fact that Loga was on the bench when Perfect Chikwende’s goal gave Zimbabwe qualification, automatically makes him the architect behind the qualification.
The Croat’s contract runs until February 2022, and whether we like it or not, we will have to live with him until the end or we will have to pay him for the remainder of his contract.
There is no money to do that and we cannot afford to drag ourselves back to the days of Tom Saintfiet when the Warriors were thrown out of the 2018 World Cup for failure to pay the Belgian his dues.
In the meantime, let Loga enjoy his stay in Zimbabwe. Maybe, he is the messiah we have been waiting for to reach the second round of Afcon for the first time in history.
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