THERE is every reason to feel a measure of sympathy for Dynamos coach or rather, former Dynamos coach Hebert Maruwa.
Persuaded to join the club as a replacement for Tonderai Ndiraya, Jompano will no longer enjoy the luxury of flying every two weeks to Bulawayo and driving around in the Ford Everest, the Dynamos coach’s official car.
The reason given for his sacking was that the former Black Rhinos coach failed to stay within the targets for winning the Castle Lager Premiership title as he had promised.
That, however, is just the lid as those who follow the club can easily detect that there is more to this than meets the eye and ear and the advice is that Maruwa should not waste his time or money fighting reinstatement, but should only fight to be paid whatever he is owed.
Based on what is on the ground, this club never had any respect for him and questions are being raised as to why they hired him in the first place when they did not believe in his ability.
There was always this cat-and-mouse relationship between the coach and the club management, hence the ultimatums which dominated headlines since the day of their marriage.
Surely, no one can question that Jompano did the best he could to make the ailing football giants the respectable outfit that they are in the Premiership.
He certainly does not deserve the sort of treatment he received.
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Instead of firing him, Dynamos should have been thanking Maruwa for heavily increasing the team’s revenue for it is his team’s style of play that forced tens of thousands of the team’s supporters to leave their homes for Barbourfields Stadium.
Football is not always about winning unless the Dynamos leadership feels that Hwange is not Premiership material and as such Dembare were belittled by drawing with Chipangano.
That is the problem in giving club supporters the responsibility of running the affairs of the club they love. They will end up destroying it because administration is not in their blood, but cheering the team from the stands.
One Dembare fan even jokingly said if Dynamos was a football federation, Fifa would have jumped in long back to install a Dynamos normalisation committee.
On that premise, the late Job Kadengu, Jockoniah Nhekairo, and Morrison Sifelani could surely be turning in their graves asking themselves what has happened to that sound leadership they so much preached about and also laid down.
It is fact that whoever will come in as the new Dynamos coach is unlikely to succeed as the environment at the club is toxic and unworkable, as Murape Murape, Richard Chihoro, and even captain Frank Makarati will testify.
The Maruwa experience is also a warning to Zimbabwean coaches that they should not be bullied into signing contracts that give the employer an advantage, but should strive to leave room for a mutual separation with financial benefits.
We know that most coaches are unemployed and also desperate, but they should not allow clubs to take advantage of that desperation to exploit them by demanding unrealistic targets in return for a job.
Both the Footballers' Union of Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwe Soccer Coaches' Association have model contracts which can be used in the contractual negotiations.
A coach like Maruwa will surely get another job offer but hopefully from a team that respects him unlike Dynamos which has no clue as to what sort of coach they want.
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