FOOTBALL INDABA IS NEEDED PRONTO

My dearest readers..........Philosopher Albert Einstein was not smoking his socks when he said: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.”

Why then do we, as a country, do the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

Every two years we register for the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers at senior national team level but we are always ill-prepared. We give the coaching job to people who are out-of-depth, journey men or those who have NEVER won anything in their careers. We assemble our teams a week before, yet we expect instant results against well prepared opposition teams. We send our youth squads to sub-continental and continental tournaments ill-prepared yet we expect them to do wonders.

We have produced a plethora of coaches with myriad of two-week certificates but wouldn’t be touched even with a beanpole by our Premier League teams who rightly prefer to hire foreign coaches. Our so-called Premier League is littered with ordinary foreign players who add no value to the league yet they take up spaces for the locals and the biggest loser is, of course the national team which ends up filling the spaces with ordinary players from armed forces teams.

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We have a Football Association (FA) whose office supplies must have had a dictionary with the word ‘DEVELOPMENT’ deleted and cannot think beyond the doorsteps of Sigwaca House. We are the only country in the whole world with no replica for our senior national team, which means no identity, yet we expect the nation to rally behind the team whenever it plays.

For years, we have always sent 20-year-olds in Under-17 youth tournaments and have repeatedly failed to evolve when all our neighbours Lesotho, Botswana and Namibia have made great strides. Botswana has already qualified for the AFCON in 2012 which was co-hosted by Equatorial Guinea and Gabon; Madagascar has already qualified for 2019 AFCON, Lesotho could also qualify for AFCON 2019 for the very first time.

We are down in the dumps. Without a win in the qualifiers, only one point and two goals. We last won a game two years ago – against DR Congo in the COSAFA Castle Cup Third Place Playoff in Namibia.  To say we are trudging in a forest yet we can’t see the trees would be putting it mildly. We have a new Minister of Sports, Culture and Youth Affairs in Harries ‘Madze’ Bulunga, a former player and coach.

Having watched with sadness our CAF Inter-club competitions representative, Mbabane Swallows in the Champions League and Young Buffaloes in the Confederation Cup, he has acknowledged that we are lagging behind. As a former coach for the national team himself, Bulunga knows better than everyone that we need to stop re-inventing the wheel.

We cannot dry today’s washing with yesterday’s sun.
That’s why I want to plead with Bulunga that as he settles in at his new job and still having consultative meetings, he must consider calling a FOOTBALL INDABA where all the stakeholders can have a say on what could be done to take our football out of bondage into prosperity.

 We need the input of every stakeholder and this will help his ministry on what needs to be done. It will also help him put his fingers on the pulse of the root of the challenges we are facing as a football nation.

Achieve

The Football Indaba won’t be just a talk-shop but the findings and recommendations must be implemented with a set time frame. We need government’s political will and support to achieve whatever goal we set. That’s why this State-of-the-Nation-Sports-Address (SONSA) welcomed Bulunga with the first task of finding our WHY as a sporting nation.

Once he has addressed that issue, then we can begin to put in place the building blocks on which to grow our sports. On the football front, as the most popular and supported sport in the country, that need the FOOTBALL INDABA to address the pertinent issues we continuously make us potential great but perennial bloopers on the continental stage. Mr. Minister, ‘Madze’, please consider this as a matter of urgency. We are now the laughing stock of the region. It’s not funny anymore.
What did Albert Einstein say about insanity? Precisely .........

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