Tears From The Heart

buried a long time ago, as disturbances rocked the National Sports Stadium following our 0-1 loss to Hwange in a league match.

What had started as a good day, with our fans fully behind their team in this crucial game which we needed to win to make up for the heartbreak of that cruel last-minute loss against Highlanders, turned ugly towards the end of the match.

Some of our fans directed abusive songs at our head coach Moses Chunga and, soon, my name was dragged into the songs and unprintable words and phrases were used to abuse the coach and me.
With a few minutes remaining in the game, as we battled to get a goal for a point, a group of our fans who had been sitting in the bay on the right side of the VIP Tribune, charged towards the security fence that separates the two sitting areas.

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That group hurled all sorts of insults in my direction and, while the newspapers today (yesterday) claimed missiles were thrown at me, I want to make it clear that at no point were missiles tossed in our direction.
Yes, the group of CAPS United fans who confronted me used a variety of abusive words, and were clearly angry, but there is a big difference between people demonstrating for a certain cause, even if they are using strong language, and throwing missiles in the direction of their target.

Of course, there were problems outside the stadium, where police were forced to use teargas, but while I didn’t see what happened outside after the game, where missiles were possibly thrown, I have to say this was different from what happened inside the stadium where I was confronted.

When you go to a football match, with your family, to support a team that you have sacrificed so much, in terms of financial resources, in a bid to make it the best club in the country, you certainly don’t expect to suffer the kind of abuse that was directed to me on Wednesday.

But, at the same time, you will also be naïve to believe that fans, especially at a big club like CAPS United, can simply accept a poor run, including back-to-back defeats for their team, without them responding in a certain way and asking serious questions about where we are getting it wrong.

As the leader of the team, in terms of its management structures given that Twine Phiri is now focused on leading the entire PSL where he is chairman, I understand the frustration and, when you lose to Hwange at home, I can understand the anger among our fans. The supporters look to me to provide the right leadership, to hire the right coach, to buy the right players, to give the players and their coaching staff the right incentives for them to perform and, in general, to provide the right conditions for CAPS United to become the best football club in the country.

Our supporters know that we can’t win the league championship every year, because no football club in the world will ever do that, but they want us to always try and do it and, in the years that we fail to win the league title, they want to have the comfort that the team tried its best.
I understand the fans’ frustrations and I am not one to criticise them and we share the same spirit to see our team becoming successful and all I can tell them is that their message was heard and it’s a wake-up call for us to work even harder.

I have a responsibility to the fans to do what is best for CAPS United and that is why we have invested so much in the club, including buying players at astronomical fees, and while others in my position would choose to walk away after what happened on Wednesday, I’m cut from a different cloth.
My passion for CAPS United runs deep and this is the only local football club that I have loved, since my days as a kid, and I found some of the insinuations, from the fans, that I am a Dynamos man, to be ridiculous because that will never be the case as long as I live.

Dynamos are our big rivals and that is my only connection to them and, while I respect them as a football club, I am a CAPS United man and noone can change that.
Admittedly, our coach made his name at Dynamos, as a player, but in his life as a coach he has traveled far and wide from his old team by coaching at Black Rhinos, Hackney, Shooting Stars, Arcadia United, Shabanie and winning the championship with Gunners.

I have always believed that Moses Chunga should be judged purely on his results, rather than where he played his football, and if he loved Dynamos so much, then why did he guide Gunners to the league championship, in a close race with Dynamos, rather than favouring his old team?
Bambo knows that he cannot live on what he did in the past and his family, which includes some young school-going kids, is dependent on what he earns in the work he is doing today, for them to get food on the table and a place at school, rather than what he achieved in fame as a player a long time ago.

He wants to succeed, because he also needs to build his profile as a coach, and he can only do that by winning more league championships and succeeding in the pressure zones that you find at big clubs like CAPS United.

Yes, in the last few games, we have failed to get the results that we wanted and our fans have debated the changes that are being made to the team but it is my conviction that we are just going through a bad phase and, soon, the real Green Machine will emerge.

We have created pressure on our players and the freedom they had at the beginning of the season is gone now because they are playing with this psychological load, which makes it difficult for the team to express themselves.

Simba Sithole scored five goals in his first three matches but he is also under intense pressure now because the boys can also feel the heat coming from the terraces, especially when the fans start shouting at the coach.

Chunga, ultimately, will determine his destiny by his results but, as the CAPS United leadership, we believe he has not yet reached the stage where we can say he has failed and he still needs to be given time and support.

So, we are backing him all the way and we are also improving the players’ preparations for their games, where we have re-introduced pre-match camping, and we are bringing in a psychologist to work on their minds so that we can find the Green Machine that started the season.

In the event that Chunga decides to leave, we can only recruit a foreign coach because we have set high standards for ourselves, where we have said only championship-winning coaches can guide our team, and right now those who have done that, like Norman Mapeza, are contracted elsewhere.

We have been here before and we have, in the past five years, parted ways with Gishon Ntini, Luke Masomere (who cried in the dressing room at Mucheke in his last game), Alban Mafemba, Jostein Mathuthu, Lloyd Chitembwe, Fordson Kabole and Bambo is now in his second spell after he left four years ago.

In five years we have had about seven head coaches, and a number of assistants who include Kifton Kadurira, Darlington Dodo and Callisto Pasuwa, with most of them leaving because we put them under pressure during a bad patch, but what has the turnover of coaches brought us?

In fact, three years ago we fought relegation and survived on the final day when we beat Highlanders 4-1.
That’s why we have decided to go for continuity and stability this time and our only plea to our fans is to bear with us right now, as we try to negotiate our way out of the hole we find ourselves in, because now – more than at any other time – is where we need the support.

We are seven points behind the leaders Motor Action, with 10 games played, but in an unpredictable season like this one, a lot of things will happen and noone can tell me that CAPS United is out of the race.
I know the position we have taken is not popular among some of our fans but we believe it is the one in the best interests of the team, which is also supported by the players, and I will not hide in the sand if it backfires because I am so sure we can do great things this season without rocking our boat.

And that means, together as one family, throwing our support behind the coach.
Support us and we will surely not let you down.

  • Farai Jere is the Operations Director of CAPS United Football Club.

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