Bit-by-bit, brick-by-brick, we’re getting it right
BIT-BY-BIT, brick-by-brick, we finally seem to be getting it right when it comes to not only the Warriors, but what should be done downstream to support our senior national football team.
Yesterday, word emerged that Macauley Bonne and Adam Chicksen had received their birth certificates and that should clear the path for them to get passports to play for their country.
And, the call by Team Zimbabwe UK chief executive, Marshall Gore, for a clear integration system of players, born in the Diaspora, into the national football teams is a noble idea.
Gore said the players should start their flirtation with the junior national teams, which I think is not a bad idea either.
Our junior development programmes in the UK have been inspired mostly by the work that has been done the French system of a national academy.
The French initiated this after they collapsed during the last qualifying game of the 1994 USA World Cup when David Ginola lost possession in his half, in the last minutes of game, in Paris and they failed to go to the tournament.
They engaged all top coaches in France, who were working with young players in junior and youth settings, like Aime Jacquet, Gerrard Houlier, Arsene Wenger, to name but a few, and unanimously agreed they needed to bridge the gap by setting up Clairefontaire National Football Academy.
This has become the production line of all the success stories of the French Football Revolution that has seen them win two World Cups and lone one final in a 24-year span since the formation of their national academy.
I learnt a lot from Jacques Joblon, who is a former professional, at Le Harve FC and many other systems from Spain where the modules of their junior football development are among the top curricular in world football.
We didn’t have the resources to undertake this work but we had the passion and decent levels of expertise.
This explains our intensity in working with grassroots football leagues of Futsal and football, so that our young players are exposed to some of the best platforms of development.
We followed a similar module of the South Americans, who use Futsal as a development tool, from Under-8 to Under-16.
All their young players only play smallsided games and that explains their technical brilliance and intelligence in creativity.
The French module has been closely matched, and followed by Belgium, who did a similar masterplan to put in place their vision and, after just 10 years, they reached the semi-finals of the last World Cup.
This is top-level football that calls for Governments to inject huge sums of financial investment, and also allow for the growth of professionalism, in the wider ranks of all their sports sectors.
Top world-class players that command huge transfer fees should be the focus of such grand plans.
Eden Hazard, Romelo Lukaku, Kevin De Bruyne and their colleagues, have been products of national vision, not an accidental occurrence.
Paul Pogba, N’Golo Kante, Antony Marshal, Anthony Griezmann, Kylian Mbappe, to name but a few, are the new faces of the Clairfontaire National Football Academy revolution in France.
This is what some of us have been calling for, since 2009, that the future of our football should be well-planned and executed.
Zimbabwe has one advantage, at this stage, and it seems the has been a failure by the authorities back home to utilise what Senegal, Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Ghana, Nigeria and other West African countries have done.
In Nigeria, playing for the junior national teams is not a cumbersome process, the same with Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire or Morocco but in Zimbabwe the mentality pits the same citizens against each other — “home grown talents” against “the foreign brigade.’’
We should have been far, and well equipped, to qualify for the World Cup 2022 in Qatar, without doubt.
We have the players, already, who should give us a good foundation base for the building of the new national teams.
At the last AFCON finals, Madagascar went that route and brought in all players from France, with a connection to the Indian Ocean island, and they reached the quarter-finals of the tournament.
What about us?
We finished last in our group because some people simply don’t want to embrace what’s happening everywhere.
The sight of the Madagascar President and scores of people from his country, who were flown by the Government, cheering their team at the last AFCON finals, was one of the enduring images of the tournament.
That speaks to national building, providing a country with something to cheer its spirits, and nothing in Africa does that better than football.
At long last, thank God, we seem to have seen the light and the challenge now is that, after everything we have put into this revolution in the past decade, we should not let the momentum pass us by.
The national teams, be it football, netball, cricket, rugby, or whatever, belong to everyone who calls himself or herself a citizen of that country and their success brings a sense of pride like nothing else.
* Phillip Zulu is a Zimbabwean football coach, who specialises in grassroots development, based in Leeds, England