The Namibian (Windhoek)
30 October 2009
THE lacklustre show of the Brave Warriors against Zambia in the Cosafa Cup was an eyesore and I am sure the players, coach Tom Saintfiet and his technical staff and the nation would want to forget it quickly.
But before we sweep it under the carpet and deliberately avoid bringing it up in future discussions, I would like to point out a few issues.
First of all, I personally think that Namibia has some fine players and the ones who travelled to Zimbabwe for their quarter-final encounter in which they lost 1-0 in the end, are all credible and can bring so much to the table for their country in future matches.
The performance was once again not the best this year under Saintfiet and I must emphasise that I have nothing personal against the coach, his technical staff or his philosophy. But I have a huge problem with the situation in which we put ourselves whenever we play.
For starters, I think it was a bad mistake to have judged Zambia by their current record against Namibia even before our players were called to a training camp.
At the announcement of the initial training squad, Saintfiet already gave Zambia the favourites tag, judging them on their calibre, competitions they were involved in and the fact that they had already started preparing for the match against Namibia. That already planted fear in some of our players as they possibly thought that they are going to get a proper hiding and should rather just go to Zimbabwe to play for pride.
Secondly, the coach repeatedly made known the fact that Namibia has never beaten Zambia and that it is going to be a tall order for us to get a good result and that in itself did not help the spirit of the players much.
Saintfiet was initially playing mind games with the Zambians to label them as favourites and hoped to surprise them. Good and well, but it did not work in the end. If it worked, we could all been admiring his shrewdness on in that part of the game.
Point is, in modern-day football, there are no longer underdogs and if Namibia had the opportunity to go into camp early enough, had several friendly matches under their belt at least with local sides and if they had considered themselves as equal as Zambia before match day, the result could have been different.
That said, I also believe that the players could have gone to Zimbabwe with the belief of winning at all costs and put aside the records and big names or good preparations by the Zambian squad. The technical staff should know by now that records or history does not win you matches. Each match starts on a clean slate and every opponent has an equal chance to win it. That was the spirit that the Warriors are known for and it seemed to have been flung out of the window systematically. Problem is, we instead study and concentrate on the opponents and forget to prepare ourselves to take on any battle.
On match day, it was visible that the Warriors decided, as usual, to play deep defensively and they got themselves into all sorts of trouble in the first 30 minutes. Pressure was mounting from the Zambians and the poor Athiel Mbaha had to work overtime as his defenders were persistently camping alongside him on the goal line.
Naturally, coaches have their own strategies and advise or coach their players how to get out of difficult situations, but the second half was characterised by a similar defensive approach which ultimately cost us a goal in the 85th minute.
The pressure was intense late in the second half and clear signs of fatigue crept in, naturally leading to poor concentration and thus mistakes.
I am not a coach, but I have seen far more impressive performances by the same players in the current national side compared to the situation in which they are ordered to play these days. They are asked to play too deep defensively, rely on surprise counter-attacks from the midfield with virtually little expansiveness and clean balls coming through to the lone striker. Tangeni Shipahu was completely bored and had his hands on his hips the whole afternoon, wishing that his Tigers midfielders were playing to give him those decisive through-balls to try his luck at goal.
It will be a game that everyone would really want to forget, but I hope the technical staff has drawn valuable lessons from it and I wish the players also see it and come up with ways how they can improve their play instead of shaming their great skills and capabilities like that. I should say the players had the fighting spirit overall, but the instructions were simply not working for them.
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