Coaches must stop blaming referees for losses

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TRUE story — in the 80s there was a train accident on the Vic Falls railway line and my neighbour’s brother died in the misfortune.

One evening during the mourning elders from their rural home sent me a message to attend a family meeting where they were accusing the deceased wife of causing the accident in order to kill their brother.

My contribution in this meeting was: I am a soccer coach, please can you ask the deceased’s wife to take me to this witch doctor so I will get some muthi for my team. If she can cause the train to derail with this muthi, then I can win all my remaining games.

I am saying every Monday morning in the newspapers coaches are accusing referees of losing games or they are blaming their players. I have not come across a coach blaming himself for wrong substitution or poor tactics, or wondering if warm up was done properly.

Are shooting sessions at training done frequently? As for Tonderai Ndiraya he cannot blame the referees for the loss, his fitness trainer had 20 minutes of warming up. The team which when walking onto the pitch you can mistake for bodybuilders. Can that time stimulate those big muscles? The long throws, six of them, from Chiefs troubling your team for the entire game.

Where you could have easily conceded one or two goals 25th, 32nd, 42th, 70th, 75th and 87th minutes where Chiefs players took turns in missing with the goalkeeper to beat. Because they let blood rush to their heads when your threeman defence is failing to contain one striker at some stages.

Can all this be a referee’s incompetence? The high balls pumped up front in the second half by your players? If God wanted football to be played in the sky he could have put some grass over there, Mr Coach, lose honourably and win honourably.

As for Chiefs players the attitude and the approach you displayed the winning was already on the board. Word of advice to you, beating the so called big teams does not give you six points.

Do it also to the so called small teams. Lastly Tonderai Ndiraya, indiscipline within your players and you and your assistant coaches will derail the championship dream. Excellent technique passing ingredients to success.

Teams which are successful are those with excellent technique and passing, they also work hard to gain possession after losing the ball, showing high level of aggression. For a team to be successful it has to have two excellent passers in its ranks, their roles are to provide the attackers or team mates with perfect timed passes outstanding players such as late Willard Khumalo, Joel Shambo, David Phiri and Stanford Mutizwa were all capable of but were also capable of playing balls behind opposition defences.

History — World Cup Germany 1974 with West Germany winning 2-1 after beating Holland.

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