NEES SHUTS DOOR ON CARTELS
NEW Warriors coach Michael Nees has vowed he will not bow down to the undue influence of cartels that may seek to manipulate his selection of the Zimbabwe senior soccer team, insisting that meritocracy will be the password for players to cut his squads.
The German expatriate coach was officially unveiled by ZIFA yesterday in Harare where he addressed the curious media on his plans to turn around the fortunes of Zimbabwean football.
Nees, who has previously coached Rwanda and Seychelles national teams and held technical and elite coaching leadership positions in association football over the past 25 years across continents, revealed he needed space and autonomy when it comes to team selection.
The 57-year-old claimed he has never encountered serious problems with authorities seeking to interfere in team selections in his career and will not anticipate that with Zimbabwe, where allegations of shadowy cartels and unscrupulous player agents seeking to force their players into the national team, have been prevalent in recent years.
“In my previous jobs, which is not exactly how it appears on Wikipedia, I had to deal with a lot of representatives of players,’’ Nees said.
“It’s a fact that players have representatives or agents, but they don’t make selections.
“You have to select the best possible team for your upcoming challenges, and I have had no problems with them. I think we made it crystal clear to them always that there is a line that shouldn’t be crossed.
“A player must perform on the pitch, he must show us he is able, he must show the team he commits the team . . . For me, the performance on the pitch is everything, nothing else, and I have no family relations or kinship relations here, so you can be assured that I can be objective,” said Nees.
He also expressed worry over club-less players, arguing that match fitness and regular team training were essential requirements for players to be selected.
Nees’ immediate task is to announce the squad for the upcoming 2025 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers against Kenya and Cameroon scheduled to start in a fortnight.
Both matches will be held at the Mandela National Stadium in Kampala, Uganda.
The Warriors will kick-off their quest for a place at the 2025 AFCON tournament in Morocco with a date against Kenya’s Harambee Stars in Pool J on September 6.
They will then host Cameroon at the same venue on September 10.
Zimbabwe and Kenya currently do not have CAF-certified stadiums that can host international matches.
But while Nees was unveiled yesterday, the rest of his backroom staff remains a mystery despite the limited time left before the AFCON qualifiers.
ZIFA advised yesterday that the association’s technical committee was still working on the candidates to assist Nees in the Warriors dugout.
Sources however, revealed that the technical committee chaired by former Highlanders chief executive Nhlanhla Dube had shortlisted four names from which Nees can pick his lieutenants in the next few days.
The German coach, who agreed to work with locals as part of his contract, was clear on the calibre of assistants he wanted.
“The staff must add value, very simple,” he said.
“If you can get me a copy of me in the staff; we need to complement each other on and off the pitch and of course, they must commit technical understanding; we need also loyalty and to accept the role, that’s also very important.”
The Warriors coach is already behind schedule and will have a few training sessions with his team before plunging into the crucial AFCON qualifying battles.
But the task is clear, Zimbabwe needs to qualify for the 2025 AFCON finals to be held in Morocco.
“We need to embark on a good start. We can have quantitative objectives to say we must have a win or a qualitative objective which is how you play, with what energy, with what discipline, and with what style.
“If you come out of a game and you can say we did everything in our power to give a good performance then the quantitative objective or the result will follow.
“We must not separate that. We must play decent football with confidence, with discipline, with passion to have the results. First is to apply that and then the other things will follow,” said Nees.
He added that he will need to adjust to the time constraints.
“The time is very short, we must admit. We are under time pressure, absolutely but I think I have the experience of working in association football mostly.
“A club coach always has a lot of time; they have six weeks’ pre-season; they have this and that. But when you work in association football with federations there is always a lack of time and time pressure. So, I have to make use of every minute available.
“I have developed my strategies, my training. It starts even in the training. When you have a team for six weeks together, yes you can do whatever you can, but when you have only three or four sessions before the game you must probably think what can we do which is related to our formation?
“I think I had to learn the hard way because I have always been under time pressure because I have worked more in association football, and not so much in club football.
“I am very confident that I can say that I can use time very efficiently. But of course, we are also a brand-new team. The staff and the players don’t know me so we must get the message very quickly over to them and that is not easy.’’
He also warned against placing too much pressure on expectations.
“We are under a lot of time pressure. The ideal case would be we go into camp tomorrow with the local team until departure and then I will have a week to assess the players.
“I will probably make a preliminary squad of 40 players like other countries, but I don’t think you will be happy with a squad of 40 players right now’’.
“That is not feasible, the local league has to continue. We have to work all in one direction. We must be realistic about what time we have available. We have no time to waste, that’s for sure. We must go straight to business,” said Nees.