THE local football community has questioned the decision by the ZIFA normalisation committee to begin processes to appoint a substantive Warriors coach at a time the team should be busy preparing for next month’s World Cup qualifiers.

The country’s football loving community is sweating over the time ZIFA is taking to appoint a new substantive Warriors coach barely a month before the national team resumes its 2026 FIFA World Cup qualification campaign.

ZIFA Normalisation Committee published an advertisement for the country’s top coaching job early this week, and football stakeholders are worried that time is running out before Zimbabwe play Lesotho and South Africa next month.

“What we want is for our team to be a winning team we don’t want them to be serial losers. We know there are issues up top, but all we want is for them to allow for different people like us to voice out, and they get different views for our football to develop and surge ahead. Our main aim is for our football to advance and to be perfected and for that we need collaboration. We’re here to collaborate with them to make our football proceed to other levels,” said Dr Brighton Ushendibaba.

Former players believe the appointment of a substantive coach is long overdue.

“This is heartbreaking and disheartening at the same time, and we are trying to understand as a nation. This is Zimbabwe we’re talking about, and at this stage, we should be having a coach, and he should be drafting his team by now scouting both locally, regionally, and internationally,” said former Warriors players, David Sengu.

“If we don’t prepare well, we prepare to fail. So as a country I think we should do better because pasara a few weeks and we don’t have a substantive coach,” said former Warriors player, Artwell Mukandi.

We can’t keep on changing coaches because by doing that we will be going back and fourth and returning to zero instead of extending further after reaching at nine we then go back to zero and with that we’re literally doing nothing amd we are going nowhere,” said Washington Pakamisa.

The Warriors clash against Lesotho on the 7th of June before facing South Africa on the 11th and all matches will be played in South Africa.

The then Highlanders coach, Baltemer Brito took the Warriors on an interim basis for their first two World Cup qualifiers against Rwanda and Nigeria last year while FC Platinum coach Norman Mapeza was in charge when the national team took part in the Malawi Four Nations Tournament back in March.

www.zbcnews.co.zw