Published by the government of Zimbabwe
3 July 2008
interview
Harare — HE arrived on the domestic coaching scene as a virtual unknown but in the last three years Rodwell Dhlakama's profile has been steadily growing largely due to his success story with the national Under-17 soccer team.
Dhlakama has lost only once in the 22 games since he took charge of the Young Warriors in 2005.
The 34-year-old unassuming Monomotapa development manager will next month be under the spotlight as he leads his Young Warriors side into battle against Reunion for a place at the Under-17 African Championships finals in Algeria next year.
Zimbabwe's chances of getting representation at the African Youth Championships have already been dealt a blow following the Under-20 side's 5-0 humiliation by Egypt in Cairo last Sunday.
But Dhlakama, who has a strong passion for junior football, insists the Under-20 team, who are the current Cosafa champions -- are a good side who were victims of poor preparations before they travelled to Cairo where they virtually crashed out of contention.
How has it been working with the Under-17 squad?
Enjoyable . . . I draw inspiration from working with juniors. In fact, I am emotionally attached to junior players. I understand them and relate with them well.
I trained as a teacher and the commitment you must have working with kids also requires that you must have patience.
You realise that some of them would be ignorant in a lot of aspects. For instance, in the Under-17 you find that a lot of them would not have been groomed in mental fitness, psychological, physiological and technical awareness.
Those areas take quite a lot of time for a coach to inculcate in the players so it needs a person who is patient with the players.
At Under-17 level, you may also have parents who are not willing to let the kid play football and there might be a clash between the parents and the coach so you need to have good negotiating skills in order to convince the parents that football is now big business that can benefit their children.
What would you say have been the highlights of your stint as Young Warriors coach?
If you are a coach, you always want to associate with good things. A good player is measured by the success achieved and the same goes for a coach.
Winning the ANSA (Annual National Sports Awards) Coach of The Year is the biggest highlight and the biggest achievement I have had so far in my coaching career given that when they awarded me the Coach of the Year prize they were looking at many disciplines and not only football.
It was a major achievement moreso if one considers the challenges we faced with the Under-17 team in terms of things like passports, player release and general preparations.
In the end, I believe I won three gold medals in one year because I also worked very closely with the Under-20 team that won the Cosafa Cup last year.
Any low points during the period you have been with the Young Warriors?
It has to be the game we lost 5-1 to South Africa in Johannesburg which is the only one we have lost in 22 games in all competitions.
It affected me because I feel I did not lose as a coach but some technicalities involved contributed to the defeat especially the 27-hour road trip with all the breakdowns we had.
We arrived three hours before the match and what really affected me was that I felt for the boys and it was tough having to motivate them again for the second leg which we won 2-0 and that victory showed that the boys had not lost on the field.
Winning against such high profile figures like Doctor Khumalo (former South Africa Under-17 coach) motivated me to continue working with the kids.
What have you found to be the biggest challenges you have encountered in coaching the Under-17 team?
Like I said earlier on, you need to have the art of questioning, the capacity to observe, to listen, to use the body language and correct use of words because youngsters are delicate and it is quite involving and for them to understand you, there should be good rapport.
You have to be a father or brotherly figure because we are most concerned about skills development rather than results. You should not put Under-17 players under pressure to win all the time instead of allowing them to express themselves. That is why even in the senior team today, we have players who cannot control the ball but are only using their experience.
Another big challenge is that some schools are reluctant to release players while some schools like Prince Edward, Mt Pleasant, Mzilikazi, Pamushana, Churchill, which are schools of excellence which do not have a problem in supporting a coach or in the release of athletes.
How best do you think such challenges could be overcome?
I think it is high time now that the education system understands that football in schools should be played throughout the season.
The proposals have been put through but it has not been implemented.
I think if our education authorities are conscientised, they will have a different perception in as far as handling sporting issues is concerned.
What is your view on the criticism levelled against Zimbabwe's youth development policy?
To be honest, I don't think we are doing much in as far as development is concerned. Without necessarily blaming the mother body (Zifa) I think it should be mandatory for all PSL and Division One clubs to have junior teams so that from 10am juniors are in proper fields, using proper football equipment and proper referees.
That way our players will be ready if you take them to a big stadium in Abuja or Cairo they will not feel intimidated because they would have been used to playing at Rufaro or Barbourfields from a tender age.
Yes, some may argue about funding but I don't think it will take much for teams to have juniors who play as curtain raisers when they are at home but some teams like Shooting Stars, Motor Action, Eastern Lions to name just a few, do not have juniors so in the end we are forced to look at clubs like Dynamos, CAPS United and Highlanders for players.
That means we would have a narrow base from which to choose our juniors and that is not a true reflection of the talent that we have in the country.
We also have academies and some dubious academies and I think Zifa must take full account of these so-called academies some of which have been smuggling players out of the country.
When we played Botswana at the Anoca tournament in Lesotho, five of their players were Zimbabweans.
Right now we have players like Achieford Zhuwawo, Liberty Ndadzungira, Eusebio Manuwere and Kudakwashe Tinarwo who are playing in Mozambique yet there is no proper transfer of those players by Zifa to the clubs in Mozambique.
So if you want them for the national teams who do you contact when there is no database of where exactly they are and how they went there.
So how best can the development policy be modelled to ensure smooth graduation of players into the senior national team?
If we do it properly and identify the best players at a time, they must be kept together because it means we will not waste a lot of time trying to work on combinations when they graduate to the seniors.
I am not saying they will not lose matches but you can see that there will be compactness, team spirit and understanding of one another and using the law of averages they will not lose a lot of matches.
That is why the Ghana junior team, which had the likes of Essien Appiah, Kingston and Muntarri who were together at Under-17 and Under-20 levels, are now doing well for the Black Stars.
Yet it is ironic that we win the Cosafa Under-20 today and go on to lose 5-0 in the African Youth Championships qualifier.
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