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CHANGE is really what the Highlanders Football Club’s coaching department needed, but not just for the sake of change. Change must make the team better and not just a repetition of the past. Bongani Mafu was removed as head coach of the Bulawayo giants after the team’s disastrous performances, but what does the executive do?

They bring in Cosmas Zulu as technical advisor to boss Amin Soma-Phiri, Melusi Sibanda and Vezigama Dlodlo with the club charging them to win at least six of the team’s remaining nine league matches.

When a decision to dismiss the coach is made, the aim is always to turn the page and move to the next level. However, the appointment of a coaching structure that reports to Zulu, even on an interim basis, is an unfortunate step backwards for a team of Highlanders’ calibre.

Zulu has been there before and although the executive has turned him into a “Mr Fix It” of sorts, it’s hard to comprehend the logic behind his appointment. We have nothing against Zulu, but we believe his appointment is a mockery of modern football as he represents the past. Just how Bosso expects to move into the future with old time methods is strange.

His methods may have worked two decades ago, but football has undergone a lot of changes and Bosso must move with the times by bringing in people with fresh ideas to move forward.

As long as chairman Peter Dube and his executive continue to rely on old timers to fall back on, then the fans may just as well forget about glory days ahead. The executive have an obligation to ensure the team is performing at its best by hiring the best coaches instead of the piecemeal appointments that are becoming synonymous with Bosso.

Last year, the same executive removed Kelvin Kaindu towards the end of the season and replaced him with Zulu and Mark Mathe in a caretaker capacity. Bosso were second when Zulu and Mathe were roped in, but the team ended in fourth position.

The executive had a chance to remove Mafu after the first 10 games of the season when he fell four points short of the required minimum 18 points they set as a target for him. Instead, they stuck by the floundering coach saying he could still regroup his troops and lead Bosso out of their quagmire. If they were looking for a coach that would transform its fortunes, that was the opportune time to make such a change.

Even giving the new coaches a nine-match run is a joke. A substantive coach should have been appointed to assess the present crop of players in the remaining nine games so that he would have an idea of who to build the team around for next season. The announcement that the hunt for a substantive coach is already in motion is not helpful at all as the players know that a new man will again take charge next season. This is bad for players’ morale and we wonder if the executive took that into consideration when they decided to release Mafu.

Perhaps these piecemeal appointments point to more grave issues of a divided executive that are not in the public domain because if they were pulling together, they would have thought long-term instead of the remaining nine games.

It would have been best had the executive looked around for the best candidates for the job. Surely the Bosso job is probably one of the most highly sought after positions in domestic football, so there are always going to be plenty of good candidates putting their names forward.

Given the embarrassing manner of Highlanders’ attempted shot at the league title, the club should have been more decisive and settled for a long-term coach rather than the wrong turn interim option.

They have hit the panic button on emotion and fear and that’s the problem.