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Ricky Zililo, Senior Sports Reporter
ONE of the country’s most revered junior football coaches and fierce critic of age cheating Dumaza Dube, says football administrators are guilty of fanning the cancerous tendency that continues to threaten genuine development of players.

The former Highlanders development coach, who also coached the national Under-15 team, is well-known for exposing over-aged players, especially those called for national duty, something that has won him lots of enemies.

Now based in Namibia where he is teaching, Dube recalls that during his 10 years in the junior structures at Highlanders, the only tough opposition he faced were “highly sophisticated age cheats”, whom he says should be barred from coaching juniors.

The outspoken gaffer says his most memorable moments with the junior set up was discovering the potential in some young boys, who went on to ignite both local and foreign football leagues.

Some of the players Dube coached from a tender age include 2019 Castle Lager Soccer Star of the Year Joel Ngodzo, his brother Zephania and former Hwange and FC Platinum striker Simon Njeleza, whom he scouted from Cement Side in Bulawayo.

He also coached Turkish-based Warriors central defender Teenage Hadebe, striker Knox Mutizwa who is in the books of Golden Arrows in the South African Premierhsip, FC Platinum defender Lawrence Mhlanga, Mandlenkosi Gasela and Bulawayo City FC winger Trevor Ndlovu, among others during his days as Bosso’s juniors’ coach. The veteran coach also put to rest a long raging argument from some quarters that Aston Villa combative midfielder Marvelous Nakamba never turned out for Bosso juniors.

“We recruited Nakamba at Highlanders during trials that we conducted with the then Bosso first team coach Methembe Ndlovu in 2007. Nakamba was with us at Highlanders in 2007 and 2008. He was part of our tour of Durban, South Africa, as an Under-15 player in 2008 for a competition dubbed ‘One World Football Tournament’ before moving to Bantu Rovers in 2009,” said Dube.

The One World Football Tournament, which Dube rates among his best days at Bosso, had Turkey’s giants Galatasaray and Team Inziar, Leport of France, China’s Gonzhong, New Orleans of United States and the hosts Team Durban.

“Competing at the One World football festival in South Africa was an eye opener. It changed my approach, as I started doing a diploma in sports studies which I completed in 2012 with SRC and Nust, but we are yet to receive our certificates despite fulfilling our obligations. I hope the current Youth, Arts, Sports and Recreation Minister will help us in that regard. At that tournament, we played international teams from all over the world: Turkey, USA, France, China, South Korea, Namibia and South Africa,” said Dube.

“Participating in the 2010 Youth Olympics was a life changing moment as well. That team had some of the best talent, which included Chicken Inn goalkeeper Donovan Bernard, Bulawayo City striker Mgcini Sibanda, striker Ackim Mpofu, who is now in the USA, Keith Murera of Ngezi Platinum Stars and Hwange-born Pritchard Mphelele.

“The youth tournaments that were held in Harare, including the VW-sponsored competition, helped us select the best players with correct ages despite their small body frames. Those right-aged players always got us to the finals, passing through landmines of ninjas (a football term for overaged players),” he said.

Dube said he believes most junior players he trained went on to shine because of the “curriculum” he gave them. Their programmes didn’t only focus on physical development, but also looked into the psychological and sociological development of players.

This allowed players to build their remarkable characters, making an attachment bond that lasts a lifetime. Dube said he strongly believes age cheating perpetrators disadvantage potentially talented players and must be prosecuted.

“I overcame the challenges of being a coach by doing my work to the best of my abilities and producing results. In the junior set up, I don’t think I ever faced tough coaches that were hard to defeat. I only faced highly sophisticated age cheats, who were difficult to convince that we were only there to see talent being nurtured and not being cheated. My best coach that shared similar objectives with the non-cheating world was Sakhelene Nxumalo. He was probably the only one.

“Age-cheating is a cancer that kills development. As a coach educator with the right state of mind and correct developmental pathways and good ethical background, I find age-cheating criminal because the perpetrator gains more than the victim. You slowly kill the confidence of a young player. It’s sad that age cheating is practised in most of our schools and development platforms and our representative associations are doing nothing about it.”

Dube is himself a former Bosso fringe player, who shared the dressing room with the likes of the late legends Mercedes “Rambo” Sibanda, Benjamin Nkonjera and Zenzo Moyo. He started having an interest in grassroots development in 1994 as a student teacher at Tokwane Ngundu Primary School while at Morgenster Teachers’ College in Masvingo. He also played for Triangle FC with the likes of Maxwell Magidi, Shaine Camal, Joram Muchambo and Stancelous Maregere.

“I coached a formidable school team which went to the finals at Ngundu Growth Point for the first time in the history of the school. I was assisted by Dzinoreva Bernard. I did the same thing at Tshongogwana Primary School in Lupane in 1996 as a qualified teacher before I was moved by Highlanders to Cement Primary where I discovered a gold mine of talent with the likes of Zephaniah Ngodzo, Joel Ngodzo, Ntokozo Tshuma, Simon Njeleza, Njabulo Nyoni, Maulani Phiri and Ndumiso Khanye. The school was a football powerhouse and we produced talented players. This was from 1997 to 2005,” he said.

At Highlanders Dube started as an Under-15 coach before becoming the club’s head of development.

“In 2008 when Madinda Ndlovu came to Highlanders I was briefly released from my duties after allegations that I had sold his tactics to Nation Dube at Hwange. How could I have known his tactics when I was a developmental coach? It didn’t get into my head because I had enough respect for Madinda. It was the pressure which was building up. I took it as a mistake because I was innocent. I was rehired when he left Bosso, then left in 2016 to join Bantu Rovers who shared the same views and passion for development as mine,” said Dube.

A holder of about 11 youth football coaching certificates, including the Zimbabwe Soccer Coaches Association (Zisca) levels 1 up to 4, Caf C and Caf B badges, capped by a Diploma in Sports Studies, Dube left Bosso when they were on the verge of setting up an academy.

He believes academy will help Highlanders, not only to get funding from Fifa, but in churning out complete players.

“I was at Highlanders for 10 years and my duties were to identify talent, plan programmes for development, production of a coaching syllabus, recommending potential gifted players to the first team as well as providing a link between the parents and the club. In those 10 years at Bosso, I learnt so many things about a community club. It has slow growth because of the decision-making process and dependence on sponsorship.

“My wish is to see Bosso growing into a commercial club, becoming big business, and with an academy Bosso is going to benefit from Fifa grants as well as commercial rights in selling their products. It can develop into a big business as it has the pull factor in Southern Africa. Highlanders can be a very rich club in Africa if it adopts a business model.

“Bosso should change and register as an academy and employ highly qualified and a capable technical team to take care of their developmental programmes. The club must align itself with the rigours of sports science in the development of players, set up a programme that will mature in five years and in the sixth year compete in the Premier Soccer League with 80 percent home-grown talent. If they set targets and provide a platform to achieve them, Highlanders can do it,” Dube said.

Comparing Bosso and Bantu Rovers, Dube said: “I can say at Bosso it was like being home, but despite having a lot of influence, I failed to turn it into a fully registered academy, which could have unlocked a great future for the club. I was working with so many elders in that pursuit. At Bantu I learnt a lot from Methembe and the Bantu sponsors from different overseas countries and now I have a global view of development.”

He said junior coaches face an identity crisis in Zimbabwe as the profession is regarded as mere occupation of playing with kids.

For that reason, Dube thinks that’s why Zifa appoints PSL coaches to coach national junior teams, undermining and overlooking development coaches’ great work and sacrifice.

“We must turn all our junior clubs into academies to get recognition and support from Zifa. Let’s work hard for recognition by the Zifa assembly which seems very removed from football development.” – @ZililoR