… association not under pressure to fire Logarusic
ZIMBABWE Football Association (Zifa) says they do not have the luxury of parting ways with senior men’s coach Zdravko Logarusic. The Croatian has a crucial task of preparing the team for the upcoming Africa Cup of Nations and the World Cup Qualifiers.
ZIFA came under heavy criticism following the Warriors first-round exit at the recently ended COSAFA Cup, which hosts South Africa edging guest nation Senegal on penalties.
With Logarusic struggling to make an impression, cries grew louder far and wide for him to be shown the exit door, but ZIFA stuck to their guns, saying the coach would not be sacked.
However, in an exclusive interview yesterday, Zifa president Felton Kamambo said Logarusic stays put.
“We will not be cowed into submission by people with ulterior motives, and you can’t pull down the stadium because the ball has burst. The World Cup qualifying games are just around the corner. People want us to fire the coach now, and when we go on to lose, the same people will be up against us again saying that Zifa fired a coach untimely who had managed to take us to Afcon, ” Kamambo told EnterSportNews.
“We are very calculative when it comes to the decisions we make. While we appreciate the following our football had and the concerns from various stakeholders, many issues need to be put into perspective regarding factors that might have led to how the team performed in South Africa. You are as good as your last match, and when was the last time we had local football in our country, given that most of the players in this squad were locally based players?
“We are not paying any attention to the debate. The technical committee is going through their routine post-match tournaments post mortem. It’s their duty that after every match or tournament, they do assessments to see what went wrong, what were the weaknesses, what could we have done better and map the way forward.”
” The idea is not to fire the coach each time you lose, and games are around the corner. We don’t want to be put under any pressure. They will pressure you into firing the coach and tomorrow. They will start saying had it been Loga at the helm, and he would have done better, so we are very calculative when it comes to decision making.”
The Warriors, who boast of winning the Cosafa Cup a record six times, exited the tournament without a win. They drew 0-0 against Mozambique in their opening match of the tournament, came from behind to force a 2-2 draw against Malawi before going down 2-1 against Senegal in their last match of the company.
In September, the Warriors are back in action when they take on South Africa in the World Cup qualifiers at the National Sports Stadium before travelling to Ethiopia a week later. African giants, Ghana, are also in the same group.
