Opinion By Hope Chizuzu|THE penultimate Afcon 2019 qualifier played in Monrovia on Sunday, which off course Zimbabwe predictably lost 1-0 was revealing in more ways than one….and with a good measure told a beautiful story which am going to reveal now.

I have been reading how young striker Tino Kadewere lost it with the public on social media, yes, something the boy could have avoided with a bit of wisdom and maturity. But the matter was the result, yes, the loss and off course the number of clear cut chances spurned.

But the reason the Warriors lost was the farcical preparations which in international football gives 56 percent perfect chance for a positive result. Zimbabwe botched that up by poor preparations. So, when the match kicked off, Zimbabwe was left with just 44 percent chance to win the match….and in that percentage we still fashioned eight good chances to score in 94 minutes.

Here is the story guys. Do not blame me for unmasking this. It is my calling. As an evangelist for purity, do not crucify me….just get the message. When ZIFA decided to send Xolisani Gwesela as a advance party, they were reading from a good football manual.

Gwesela was supposed to be equipped to do a complete environmental scanning for the team and relay the details back home to enable the team to plan strategically for the match. The burly Gwesela should have relayed information like the state and condition of the match venue, the temperature levels, humidity, wind speed and crucially the location.

This information was then supposed to inform the travel arrangements the team needed for the crucial encounter. It was also supposed to inform the quality of kit for the boys including the boots and gloves to use on the match day. Instead of Gwesela doing that, he was busy taking selfies and testing bed quality in hotels and posting that on WhatsApp groups and Facebook.

Remember on match day I posted that all of you should watch the kit that the Warriors will use for the match. I was preparing you for this analysis that should be helping everyone including team manager Wellington Mupandare. Our kit was of very low quality and too heavy on the players considering the conditions on match day.

On match day the humidity was a punishing 93 percent, the temperature was 25 degrees Celsius with an easterly wind speed of 6km per hour off the Atlantic coast. Such conditions already presented challenges to the boys who had arrived in batches with the first arriving on Thursday and the Europe based on Friday. The match was on Sunday. Already the vector was tipped the wrong way, even before the match because of this permutation.

Football is a science that we can not fake. Playing away from home conditions always presents problems of acclimatization also known as acclimation. This is a the process in which an individual organism adjusts to a change in its environment (such as change in altitude, temperature, humidity, photoperiod or pH), allowing it to maintain performance across a range of environmental conditions.

So, our Warriors need to acclimatize and some factors come into play such altitude which affected our players from Zimbabwe, South Africa, Tanzania and Europe differently for this encounter. Did we have consideration for that before deciding on travel arrangements?

Jet lag is also a key component of strategic planning for away matches. Adjustment is key because for every hour of time difference, ones needs a day to adjust. Zimbabwe has a time difference of two hours with Monrovia, Tanzania has got one hour and while Europe is now on GMT. All those conditions needed to be considered. Was that put into consideration before departure?m

Did Gwesela relay back information upon arrival in Monrovia ahead of the team? If he did, why did ZIFA fail to execute a scientifically accurate plan to ensure maximum unfettered performance by players? If not, what was the reason he was send as an advance party? What was the input of the technical director for this match?

What did the medical team do or advised to the technical bench to ensure maximum performance was not compromised? Where the coaches advised of this and ignored it, going against scientific grain hoping the HOD, Davison Muchemwa’s juju will carry the day for us?

What was clear is that team manager, Mupandare and ZIFA either were ignorant of this or got their maths wrong. For the conditions in Liberia, Zimbabwe should have arrived in Liberia on Tuesday (which was the original plan) to enable themselves enough time to acclimatize. We have two hour time zone difference with Monrovia, so we needed two days of rest to compensate for that.

If everyone had arrived Tuesday, it was going to be perfect because they were going to train Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and partly Saturday – enough time to rest while training. If that option had failed the best available would have been arriving Friday, then rest Saturday and play Sunday without training – that way the environment would not have affected them as it did on the day.

– [ ] But that was not possible because players had arrived in batches on different days, so their time in Monrovia to adjust was different and compromised qualitative planning. Worse they did not have a core for the match as changes were obvious.

As if that was not bad enough we had players coming from three different time zones and arriving on different times wrecking havoc in the system and the result was a heavy if disjointed performance. The poor quality kit the players worn worsened an already bad situation because it was not an all weather kit with no thermo regulators to help in athletes performance in such adverse conditions.

What that meant was that in conditions as those obtaining in Monvoria on the day of the match, every one of our players carried on average 2.5kg to 3kg extra which in essential affected their performance in terms of proficiency, speed, accuracy, decision making, timing and general awareness. So before we question Knowledge Musona, Ovidy Karuru, Kadewere and Khama Billiat for the easy chances they failed to bury, let us consider this beat too.

We can not ignore the waste of money that ZIFA incured by sending an advance party that provided no critical data for decision making, a situation that could have helped us in the game. Before we question the communication in defence for the lone goal we conceded, we need to consider how altitude affected the converted right back. We can not fake a performance, the way we rig an election.

Make no mistake that heavy poor kit affected our performance. I raised the issue during the last Afcon against Tunisia, Algeria and Senegal – all the three had all weather thermo regulator fitted kits. As Zimbabwe, we watched how our boys were busy rinsing sweat from our kit.

In future the advance party should be well equipped to offer help to team doctors, managers, coaches and add value. They are a good arrangement but ZIFA use that as a cash making venture and not for its purpose. It could have been better, had all those considerations made for the Warriors.