Who’s to blame for Highlanders’ woes?

HIGHLANDERS finally announced the sacking of Bongani Mafu as coach, four days after defeat by Chicken Inn that saw the Bulawayo giants drop into the Premier Soccer League’s bottom half to 10th on the 16-team table. Mafu’s stormy nine-month reign was ended at a Press conference that left fans with more questions than answers. He had faced renewed chants for his dismissal from supporters at Barbourfields Stadium and the Highlanders’ executive led by chairman Peter Dube made its move amid growing fears that the club could be relegated.

The truth is that under Mafu, Bosso had been in freefall for months and the executive’s hand was forced by the fans’ growing restlessness.

Although the executive was jolted to its senses and cut ties with the underperforming Mafu, his replacements caused even more disenchantment, with fans taking to social media networks to vent their frustrations against the club’s leadership.

They derided the appointment of Cosmas Zulu to lead the technical staff comprising Amin Soma-Phiri and Melusi Mabaleka Sibanda saying it represented a backward step. The fans just fell short of calling for the Highlanders’ executive to go.

Which then begs the question who really is to blame for Highlanders’ woes? Bosso fans want their team to dominate the domestic scene season after season, but that hasn’t happened for the past nine years. Who then must shoulder the blame?

That is probably where the problem lies as one never gets a straight answer. People resort to the blame game. The executive blames the coaches, and the coaches blame the management for lack of resources or the players for sabotage or failing to understand their philosophy.

But why is it that only the coach is blamed for poor performances? He is not on the pitch trying to score the goals. Surely the players are the people who hold ultimate responsibility for the success or otherwise of the team.

Yes, coaches have to take responsibility when their team lose but what about the club administrators? What if they don’t pay players on time?

It’s hard to get positive results if conditions don’t favour those charged with getting results. Management sometimes will not look at their mistakes and correct them but always blame the coach. Maybe executive committee members should also learn to leave the clubs they claim to love and allow others to bring in fresh ideas.

It rarely happens that management blame themselves. They conveniently point a blaming finger to those below them. But how can fans force club management to account for some disastrous decisions they make on their behalf? The only platform management gets to account is at the annual general meeting (AGM).

So for fans to get their way, they have to mobilise themselves and ensure they are in good standing so that when an AGM is called, they attend in numbers and vote in the people they believe can do a good job at their favourite clubs, instead of always whining outside the system.

Most fans have turned to social media to call for Bosso chairman Dube’s head, but sadly that’s the wrong platform. If Bosso fans could be as active within the club structures as they have been on social media this week, the club would not be in the situation it finds itself in right now.

It’s not good enough to just moan about what Dube is doing or not doing on the wrong platform. The fans must just become fully paid up club members in good standing to ensure that their voice is never ignored since they would a big say at AGMs.

Right now it’s Dube who has the mandate to run the club having been elected unchallenged and he is doing what he believes is for the good of the club. If fans feel he has lost it, they have to vote him out at the next AGM.

The only problem is that those voicing the strongest opinions are probably not Bosso members so their complaints will simply remain inconvenient noise.

Here’s some feedback by former Warriors’ captain Ephraim Chawanda on last week’s instalment about players preparing for their future.

Several events have occurred, raising spectra of emotions from the football fraternity. The core of these reactions being the welfare of football players after their “use by” date. My opinion is two fold. What did the ex-player himself prepare for his retirement? What is the ex-player doing personally for his upkeep?

Yes, the sore fact is that some of us never bothered to entertain such thoughts during our playing days because then, you are made to feel immortal. Now the fact that football on its own is a fully-fledged industry, a rich one for that matter, seems to elude a lot of us in Zimbabwe.

Ex-footballers because of ignorance believe that all of us must be coaches or managers, which of course will keep us in the public eye, whose attention we want to hold onto for eternity.

Those who have been appointed into management positions from other sections of football (non-players), use the popularity of the ex-players to keep their positions by ensuring the ex-players are excluded from administrative positions but are directed to the normally volatile coaching positions.

They manipulate the system so much that we fear or feel inadequate to challenge for nominations to those positions.

The challenge which faces us now as ex-footballers is how do we win back our stake in the football industry by working together strategically to ready ourselves for an effective takeover?

We need to educate the younger and upcoming generation about the pitfalls of the industry. For now, our silence has been deafening.

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