By Shingi Shadreck
THE 2024 Zimbabwe Premier League ended on a high note for most PSL clubs, with some clubs left licking their wounds after some bruising encounters.
The country’s ‘Big Three’ clubs — Dynamos, Highlanders and CAPS United — breathed a sigh of relief after finally securing respectable places to end the season. The precarious positions are not what their demanding noisy fans would have wanted.
The fall from grace of these top clubs cannot be attributed to the country’s economic challenges, rather, these clubs have failed to evolve and modernise their welfare on and off the pitch.
Football, as an international sport, has evolved, leaving our local clubs in the Ice Age. Our local clubs must make a bold move to grasp and implement the much needed new trends in modern football. The digital age has ideally and logically made football more of a science rather than a social event to appease the bored and ever restless football fanatics. Football has become a huge investment opportunity and not just an event to while the 90 minutes of play on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
The drastic fall from grace of the country’s three most successful big clubs is attributed to a variety of reasons.
This is not because our clubs are devoid of talent — there is talent galore there.
It may not be the talent we witnessed when Shackman ‘Shacky’ Tauro was the talk of town, when Stanford ‘Stix’ Mtizwa used to dominate the charts and broke the hearts of the apposite sex, when Moses ‘Bambo’ Chunga and Tauya Murehwa, ‘The Flying Doctor’, were household names in the local league, but it still is talent.
Donning the white and blue jersey brought untold euphoria to the players. The white and black jersey made sure the name of the player’s name was written in the book of history of the football gods. The green and white jersey demonstrated an aura of excellence, a domineering air of success in the ghetto suburbs of Harare.
Zimbabwe football is, without doubt, one of the best and talented leagues in Southern Africa. Players are not hyped by the media as has become the trend in most leagues, including the most watched English Premier League where the media plays the game for the players. Zimbabwe oozes with football talent regardless of the fact that most of our players find themselves plying their trade in the South African League where a good number have become household names over the years, such as Khama Billiat, Nyasha Mushekwi and Knowledge Musona, among others.
What needs to be understood, however, is that 21st century football requires a combination of modern technology, grit and talent. There are a lot of dynamics that are not factored in in our local game to make clubs, such as Dynamos and CAPS United, competitive when they face other footballing nations, regardless of abundance of talent in their ranks. Sports sciences has been incorporated in the modern game to include players’ dietary and mental adaptability.
Without a doubt, Zimbabwean soccer is very much competitive. Zimbabwean football lacks adaptability to embrace new modern trends in administering the game. Getting onto the field of play is not all that it takes to play the game. There is a lot more that goes on behind the scenes in preparing these players.
Team psychologists have become more important in team establishment. Football requires concentration on and off the field of play. Frequent monitoring of how individuals perform psychologically helps the team achieve greater heights when they play. Reports of players collapsing on the pitch have been rampant over the years. With the best personnel to help players cope through different life transitions is of great help when they actually perform on the field of play.
One football analyst said: “A host of Zimbabwean clubs do not have critical staff to perform the backroom duties of a professional and modern football club. While we have an abundance of talent in the country, clubs need to invest heavily in recruiting personnel who look after the players’ welfare off the pitch. It is critical nowadays for clubs to at least have a skeleton backroom staff inclusive of a performance analyst tasked with data collection of videos and looking at how to exploit the weaknesses of opposition into strengths for their clubs.”
The world over, the successes of clubs is proportional to the investment injected into the club. Inevitably, cash injections for CAPS United have dwindled over the years, with disgruntled players sometimes going downing tools. This has also been the case with Dynamos and Highlanders.
Without doubt it is no secret that football requires huge amounts of capital to run on a day-to-day basis. Sundowns Football Club in South Africa became successful after Patrice Motsepe, one of Africa’s richest entrepreneurs, acquired a stake, injected huge financial capital that transformed the club to a professionally run entity.
It wasn’t surprising that when FC Platinum was promoted into the Premier League, they dominated the league for three seasons, challenging for honours at almost every level of the game, inclusive of the women’s club.
Clubs need to adopt a modern philosophy of engagement on a daily basis regardless of their status on the pitch.
