The ManicaPost
ESTEEMED followers of the game of football, thank you for finding time for interaction. Lloyd “Samaita” Mutasa, the Dynamos coach, did not distinguish himself to any podium finish this season. He earned distinction in neither the championship race, Chibuku Super Cup challenge nor any acknowledgement at that annual ritual that awards the season’s excelling superstars of the game.
For winning the league title and the Castle Challenge Cup FC Platinum trainer Norman Mapeza was adjudged the Coach of the Year, while for Mutasa there were no prizes for coming second.
Fair and fine!
Granted, there was nothing tangible Samaita won to warrant an award, but do we not duly owe him recognition and credit for how he studiously and admirably put his shoulder on the wheel and grinding out a keep at the Harare giants? A coaching role with the Glamour Boys is a pressure cooker job that can easily turn even stoics into defeatists.
But this is the man who invested his faith and trust for the grueling demands of the DeMbare locker-room into rookies, virtual nonentities who would squat for trials at the club. From these small fries he stitched together a team, underdogs that defied odds and went on to pull their own weight. For this squad to fight for the title and taking it right to the wire with the last drops of their sweat, and blood sometimes, was punching above their weight and performing beyond expectations.
This must have been a career-defining season for the man these upstarts call “Father”. Or what would be our critical appreciation of how this timeline shaped Dynamos’ squad: at the beginning of the season the tactician makes the bold decision of axing and offloading such senior players as former captain Stephen Alimenda, Roderick Mutuma, Sidney Linyama and Jacob Muzokomba; the club loses Godknows Murwira, Brett Amidu, Walter Mkanga and Dominic Mukandi to local, direct rivals and they rebuffed ex-sons, Tawanda Muparati and Farai Mupasiri’s return to their fold?
Add to this how Mutasa plucked from relative obscurity the bulk of his team and brought their talents to the fore – who knew of Cleopas Kapupurika, Quality Kangadze, Godfrey Mukambi and Marshall Machazane before doing duty for DeMbare this season?
Then Cameroonian expatriate striker, Joel Christian Epoupa Ntouba, a Soccer Star of the Year finalist, was unearthed!
Perhaps out of tactical ingenuity, Samaita shunted his captain Ocean Mushure into an advanced, forward role from his traditional full-back – a transformation that yielded an impressive nine goals and several assists for the left-footer and Soccer Star of the Year second runner-up!
Then against the run of the season, the gaffer summoned his man-management skills to superintend with efficacy over a squad whose serenity was threatened by the truant and delinquent behavior of “bad boy” Denver Mukamba that had tinges of both distraction and detraction on the team.
Samaita improving Dynamos from last season’s lowly fifth position finish – well, by their lofty standards – to this season’s second also provided another glimmer. Then with the guillotine ever dangling above him – after all, he had been here before – as he battled against the odds and what was at stake, Mutasa still pressed on with playing his favoured style of a passing game that is easy and pleasant on the eye.
And difficult as it may have been, Samaita brought some semblance of glamour to the cash-strapped Harare boys, even as he competed with such resource-rich teams as the two platinum sides. But in the end he got many of a blue persuasion believing that they could pull this off as the nation reverberated to the “Nyika Yese Iri Kufara” chorus of the most-followed team in the land each time DeMbare grinded out a positive result.
Even Mapeza himself acknowledged Samaita as deserving recognition and credit. As such, we spare a thought for him. Mutasa deserves special mention, a distinction accorded to an entry in a competition that is judged to be of merit but is not awarded a top prize, in oxfoddictionaries.com terms!
It’s Game On, Play On!
Feedback:
Felicitations are in order for Gusha’s promotion. However, they must up their game to match the standard levels and avoid going down the rung. When climbing up the ladder the focus is to get to the top. The financiers of Gusha need to buttress the team; we do not want them to be a laughing stock should they get demoted again. – Crispen Tendai Masenhu.
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But how does Zifa have un unsustainable debt of varying figures? What is in place to clear that debt? How do Zifa expect to have a sponsor for the Warriors with such a debt? How was this debt incurred?
The Warriors troop into camp for just a few days for every international match before going back to their respective clubs. The fans do not watch these games for free. The Government should look into how Zifa conduct their business with a view to pinning them down heavily in order to explain and immediately clear their debt so as to develop local football. – Richard Mahuhushe Chauke.
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