HARARE - It’s now almost two weeks since the Zimbabwe national football team put up a pathetic performance to bow out of the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations preliminary qualifying round at the hands of Tanzania.
After losing the first leg 1-0 in Dar es Salaam last month, the Warriors needed to win the second leg at the National Sports Stadium with a two-goal margin, at the start of this month.
However, Ian Gorowa’s charges put up one of the worst performances by a Warriors squad as instead they had to come from behind to salvage a 2-2 draw against the Taifa Stars.
That result meant that the Warriors will miss the fifth Afcon finals in a row since qualifying for the 2006 tournament held in Egypt.
Since that fateful day at the National Sports Stadium, the Zimbabwe Football Association (Zifa) has been quite despite this great disappointment by the Warriors.
Zifa, which itself is in urgent need of revamping, could only send out a press release apologising for the catastrophe.
According to the press statement, the Zifa High Performance Committee was going to meet Gorowa and discuss his report on the match.
Failure to beat Tanzania was a monumental defeat and it does not need any High Performance Committee to see that.
The first thing was for the Zifa board to cut its ties with Gorowa and look for a new coach following that disastrous Afcon qualifying campaign which ended at the first huddle.
After letting go of Gorowa, next the board members should have done the most gracious thing to resign because they had failed the nation.
All this should have happened in that same week that the Warriors crushed out of the Afcon qualifiers.
Right now it has been 13 days since that calamity at the National Sports Stadium and the people of Zimbabwe want answers.
Sadly, Zifa is still clueless on what to do next and as long as the status quo remains, Zimbabwe will never qualify for any major tournament in the future.
Zifa’s failure to act in a timeous manner after this latest debacle is a clear sign that by the time the qualifiers for the 2017 Afcon start, the Warriors will be out of depth and are likely to struggle to make it out of the preliminary qualifiers.