Maqonda Ndlovu

While Namibia’s football leaders continue to engage in politicking and fighting, footballers continue to suffer at the periphery without food on their table.

As the adage goes, ‘when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers’. This idiom is true to the situation the ordinary Namibian footballer finds themselves in due to a man-made quagmire.

Namibian football is once again at a standstill due to several issues ranging from a leadership vacuum to a lack of lower division football because of the unavailability of sponsorships. In February 2019, FIFA placed Namibian football under the supervision of a normalisation committee whose mandate was to bring sanity to the local game following infighting amongst the leaders.

The infighting led to the Namibia Football Association being unable to meet some of its obligations, including holding elections, and at present, footballers are missing out on many opportunities as the game’s lockdown carries on unabated.

These opportunities include salaries, which help the players take care of their families, prospects of winning big contracts outside the country and chances to perfect their skills as football players.

This is the situation painted by numerous footballers, sport experts and coaches, past and present in interviews with Nampa.

Several football personalities questioned the motive of the football leaders in Namibia following the absence of what is known as “the people’s game” for over a year now.

One such individual was former Brave Warriors captain and assistant coach Collin Benjamin, who plied his trade for Hamburger SV in Germany. Benjamin says these fights have brought football to its knees.

“We have lost almost two and a half years of football due to boardroom squabbles. There are players who have dreams of playing outside the country but they are missing out because of these fights,” he said. He added that in a normal economy for someone to be an expert in their trade, they need to put in 10 000 consecutive hours crafting their trade.

“When it comes to football, these players have lost all this time and any potential employers will ask these players where they were in those 12 to 18 months? Also in football, they say if you lose one year, you need another year to come back to the level where you were previously,” Benjamin said.

Using Marcel Papama as an example, Benjamin said the Namibian player is not technically and physically up to scratch to face players such as Guinea’s Liverpool star Naby Keita, whom he faced in an Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) qualifier in November 2019. This was also the last time Namibia participated in a competitive international match.

The former national team assistant coach said Keita has played over 30 competitive matches since that game, meaning he is 30 times sharper, 30 times more experienced and 30 times fitter than the local lad.

The former 1860 Munich assistant coach says ordinarily, Namibia is five years behind the rest of Africa based on its 10-year Afcon qualification sequence. Rusten Mogane, another former Brave Warriors coach who likened football to education, echoed his views.

“Coaching is teaching and learning. If learners stay out of school for some time, they lose out and forget what they have been taught. In football it is the same, the players forget their technical lessons, they lose their fitness, endurance and many other things,” he said.

Mogane added that every training session is a building block, hence when things return to normal, the coaches will have to start from scratch. The retired coach and teacher said since there is no development at grassroots level, the teams also cannot recruit new players.

Mogane said, “We currently have a lost generation of players because of the stagnation of the game.”

As a former administrator with Black Africa, Mogane said current football leaders are not aware of the damage they are causing with their boardroom squabbles.

“Clubs must have football experts sitting on their boards because these are the people who will provide expert advice to these administrators. This will help avoid such situations,” he continued.

Meanwhile, the country’s most successful national team coach, Ricardo Mannetti said the players are the ones most affected by the current situation. “These stop and starts of the local league have a big effect on their development. They will not reach their potential at the correct time or become the best players because their training is affected,” Mannetti said.

He said qualifying for three major tournaments recently has made Namibians believe they can easily do this without an active league. He however cautioned against being relaxed because of these achievements, saying the previous foundation made it easy for the team to qualify as the team had depth, with many young players being able to put in the hours in the first and second division leagues.

These two leagues have not played competitive football in the past two years. Another coach, Ronnie Kanalelo, said Namibia needs to take the game seriously. He said local players have been starved of football over the past five years.

“This says our players have lost almost three seasons of football. Naturally, what does it mean to a 16-year-old, to a 24-year-old, to a 28-year-old? Their development is affected. Their opportunities are taken away,” he said.

Kanalelo said Namibia is 15 years behind the rest of Africa (10 years for the development of players and five years for administrators) and such fights put Namibia even further back in terms of reaching its maximum potential.

Current assistant coach Woody Jacobs laid the blame squarely on the administrators, saying football problems in Namibia are man-made.

“We are setting ourselves up for failure. We can compete with the best in Africa as long as we put our house in order. How do we expect our team to compete at the next Chan tournament when we do not have an active league? We need to do introspection and be honest to save ourselves,” he said.

The football personalities all agreed that football leaders must fight their fights in the boardroom and leave the players to display their skills on the field of play. Jacobs said what started as a promotion and relegation crisis has now turned into a personal fight amongst leaders whose aim is to push their agendas.

On suggestions for how the situation can be rectified, Benjamin called for visionary people with special qualifications so they can plan and work towards certain goals. “The task is big because we need to understand where we are now, and where we want to go,” he said.

Mogane called on the leaders to think about the players and the fans, put personal differences aside and put in place conditions that are conducive for playing football. Mannetti said the game must not come to a standstill because people interpret things differently.

“I think it should be made a criminal offence for anyone to stop football the way we have done it in Namibia. Any other matter can be attended to alongside football,” he said. – Nampa