Warriors' Chan exit

Chan is an African tournament designed to develop home grown talent so that they can feel like competing at the top level and yet its the national team reserves as they are locally based.

The idea is very good as this can be an opportunity for those new players on the market to be seen perfoming in a mini tournament without distractions of special players from abroad.

This is when strong domestic leagues prove the depth of their squads in quality as they face the national opposition.

While other nations can prepare using their national team or other strong national teams to prepare for this unfancied tournament.

Zimbabwe's Premier Soccer League has been known to have strong teams like Dynamos, Highlanders and Caps Utd who have been producing and supplying talent to the league.

Of late there has been weakening noticed with Highlanders almost fighting for relegation last season, Dynamos's failure to return the title and Caps Utd's financial slump as the club was close to debt only to be saved last minute by well wishers.

This has translated on the pitch as teams have failed to deliver beautiful football with only FC Platinum playing smooth fluid passing game with Mapeza. Dynamos and Caps have always thrived on speed and accuracy to win the game using touch and go which is famously known as kick n rush used by Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester Utd.

The teams would employ long balls forward and beat off side traps to score controversial goals. The need for midfield in these teams is only for loose balls defended or failed passes.

The old job of central defenders to wait to destroy any form of attack is now the new job for midfielders leaving the strikers with no chances created as the team focuses more on defence than attack inviting more pressure from opposition.

It will be nice to see Pasuwa playing offensive football,by asking his front runners to press opposition in their own half thereby forcing errors resulting in a Gengen goal.

We still have that mentality of lumping the ball forward to relieve team of pressure not knowing that teams have adopted possession football where their form of defence will be to deny the opposition space and ball possession limiting the chancing of scoring to nothing.

Modern players will need technical nous, emotive intelligence,visionary passing,perpendicular splitting of defences,isocelles passage of play and the ability to balance the team knowing which side of the opponent to attack which can be known as calculative attack.

Having watched Pasuwa playing in midfield, to me he was an average player who took advantage of his ball control and height. I do not recall much of defence splitting passes as this was Mucherahowa's job at Dynamos as Callisto covered the defence.

So having that limited manoevre on the pitch can also restrict a coach's ability to create sessions for creating chances as they have not been involved in real match situations counter attacking the Catennacio.

Pasuwa's ability to select as a coach was loud and clear at club level where he would lay down the law and strategy with no one interfering. Now at national level, Zifa would interfere with all sorts of disturbilisations, from demoralisation,sacking,humiliation,reinstatement and poor preparation as players are only called in Camp the week before the crucial match.

The players from different clubs bring in different playing philosophies which creates not only problems for the coach but divisions within the camp as struggle for control and power looms. Players from big teams will normally presents with big egos enough to challenge the coach and association while players from small teams have tiny ego to spark an attack on a solo ride with five defenders sorrounding the player creating an effortless chance as they are starved of possession only to pounce on a loose ball.

With Warriors loosing two matches in their group, only left playing Uganda who also need points to survive as they initially held Mali 2-2. The Cranes have developed their football and can now compete with the top ten of African football.

With Dynamos surprisingly appointing an experience Portuguess coach Paulo Silva Jorge shows that they want to take the team brand global as their beloved sons have recycled the same tactics over the years from Sunday Chidzambwa to Tonderai Ndiraya.

Highlanders have also recruited an unknown Dutch coach Arkday who will bring total football at Bosso. Little will be know at Caps Utd as they recycled Lloyd Chitembwe who played similar roles with Pasuwa in midfield but at Caps Utd. They had employed the Englishman Harrison only for him to realise that the issue of money was also going to push him out. According to reports, he had transformed the Caps team and reoiled the attacking prowess which threatened most teams in the league. He finally left for Botswana as the heatwave was approaching and financial discords within the Caps Executive.

Zimbabwe football is now 36 years old and no coaches have cemented the Warriors playing philosophy. Reinhard Fabisch came close as he remains the only coach to lead Warriors to a 13 game unbeaten run in the late 90s. Lord Morris Kakunguwo, a Zimbabwean born coach based in United Kingdom innovated a football brand called iTouch football having noticed the problem at the national level lacking a football identity. If all coaches take time to work with him and learn his global type methodolody dossier surely Zimbabwe football will reach greater heights of success.

I guess we can now regroup and focus on club football as the Warriors are landing soon at the Harare International Airport with no point to smile on their faces.

Is it the players or the coach?

Personally I blame the Zifa system of leadership as they conteibuted a lot to this disaster at Chan and hopefully they will apologise to the nation.

iTouch football will be the leading brand and style of choice in Zimbabwe as coaches use the ProTouch coaching methods to develop talent in teams and academies.