Gumbo faces bleak future as Warriors coach

By Edward Marange (Nehanda Sports)

Zimbabwe national football team coach Rahman Gumbo faces a bleak future in the job following the Warriors disastrous 2-0 defeat to Angola over the weekend.

The shock defeat given a 3-1 first leg win at home in Harare torpedoed the team’s progress to a third Africa Cup of Nations finals on a 3-3 aggregate score-line. Angola scraped through on the away goals rule.

Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) president Cuthbert Dube has already fired warning shots that his board is going to meet soon and may be forced to take a drastic decision to disband the current team and technical setup.

“We really needed to qualify and in my opinion I thought this was now going to be an easy task only to be killed by a stupid display of football. But it’s not the end of the world. Zambia who are the current holders of the Afcon lost the entire team at one time,” Dube said.

“The whole team perished but they are now the powerhouses in Africa and we cannot be surprised that they can clinch this cup again. So if we go back to the drawing board and start again with clean people, young people who are enthusiastic to make their names in Zimbabwean football, we will do it.

“We will make a real bold decision in terms of our current set up which is our technical team and of course the national team itself,” Dube is quoted saying. Those remarks all but signal the end for Gumbo who has only been in charge of the team since February after replacing Norman Mapeza.

“We lost a golden opportunity to go to South Africa on Sunday. Everything was laid for the success of our trip to Angola. Residential stands, US10 000, a chartered flight and a whole host of things was done to make sure that our team succeeds in Angola. It came to nought.

“Just yesterday (Monday) I got a very disturbing report but I suspected it that on the flight, those that went to Angola, you had match fixers, very daring people,” Dube said. He added that Zifa will investigate allegations that there were suspected match fixers in Angola.

But veteran sports broadcaster Ezra ‘Tshisa’ Sibanda came out swinging in Gumbo’s corner saying “the circus surrounding the trip was a disaster. For the Zimbabwe Football Association to agree to fly 197 people crammed together with players in a plane chattered by Mbada Diamonds was suicidal.”

“Accompanying 30 players, 8 coaching staff was 32 people from Mbada Diamonds the sponsors, 14 journalists, 12 traditional dancers, 20 Mzansi 2012 committee members, 16 representatives of premiership clubs, a number of nominated supporters, Zifa officials to make a total of 197 passengers.”

“Were all these people necessary to be flown to Angola when the match was live on ZBC or it was a simple way of spending the diamond money? It’s unheard of, unprofessional and dangerous to mix football players and so many fans packed together in whatever mode of transport especially travelling a day before a game of this magnitude.

“The players and coaching staff were never given space to bond and build team spirit as a group because there was so much human baggage around them. The coaches and players as is the norm had no time to chat, joke and talk team tactics during the trip,” Sibanda argued.

“People forget that most of those players don’t even know each other as they ply their trade in different countries and leagues. It was very important for them to gel together during the little time they had before this crunch game. How then do they get to know each other with all those people around them?” he added.

Meanwhile it’s reported Gumbo will address the media on Thursday over the disaster in Angola where ex-Manchester United star Manucho fired an astonishing quick double within the opening 6 minutes of the game.