AFTER a long winding process, Zifa finally completed the first part of appointing a national men’s football team coach.
It took the normalisation committee months to come up with German national Michael Nees who beat competition from other experienced mentors that had been shortlisted.
Whether he is the best candidate triggered a lot of debate with some arguing that Zifa made the wrong pick by employing a nomad who barely lasted more than a year in his previous jobs.
He is listed as having coached Rwanda and Seychelles but he only managed a total of five matches for the two nations.
Winfried Schäfer looked to be the best man for the job based on past experience and success, but that is a story for another day.
Nees has secured the job, all we can do now is to give him maximum support so that he takes The Warriors to next year’s Africa Cup of Nations finals in Morocco.
While we have made a bit of progress, we are still way behind schedule because Nees cannot start working in the country as he is yet to get the necessary documents in order.
Afcon qualifiers kick off on September 10 yet our coach is still stuck in his country and cannot start preparations.
- FIFA slaps five year-ban on Ex-Zifa referees' boss
- Abused female refs take on Zhoya's accomplices
- Veteran football administrator Chishanga dies
- Mhurushomana cleans Zifa accounts
Keep Reading
All he can do while sitting at home is to watch a bit of video footage as well as a few matches particularly for Europe-based players where matches are televised.
What about locally-based players? Is he going to have enough time to scout around the country for players in the Premier Soccer League and possibly the Division One leagues? Clearly not.
We do not like to tell Zifa that we told them so, because we raised this issue when Zifa was going round in circles over the appointment of the national team coach.
It is no use having a coach who is not on the ground to work. Zifa should have calculated everything to make sure that even the process of obtaining a work permit would not compromise preparations.
Preparations do not start when players get into camp. A coach needs time to study all the players that he feels have potential.
What it means is that Nees will come and work with a squad that would have been selected by his assistants.
How is he going to be accountable for results when he has to contend with players that he has never seen in action.
Zifa bungled this process and now the results of the Afcon qualifiers will be compromised because the new coach ought to have been in place by the time the Cosafa tournament was played.
We hope Zifa will learn from this experience and do things in time. How the appointment of a national team coach took so many months boggles the mind.
We hope that we will not live to regret these shoddy preparations. All the best to Nees and The Warriors as they start a new era.
