PAGELS AND TIKI-TAKA A close look at the Warriors, in their adventure in Zambia, shows that they only played tiki-taka, the brand favoured by their outgoing coach Pagels, for just 45 minutes, in that first half against Malawi when their football was so good it appealed even to their opponents. But for all our lovely touches, the reality was that our only goal, in that match, came from a dead ball, a free-kick lofted into the penalty area, the confusion it triggered and Masimba Mambare reacting well to bundle the ball home. Most of the time, when we sprayed the ball around with beautiful one-touches, we never threatened our opponents, the majority of the phases of play were either in our half or just before the attacking third and all that Malawi would do was just sit back, watch us thread the passes, and wait for us to come into the danger zone. Incredibly, when the Malawians lost one man, sent off in the first half, we also lost our way and tiki-taka never flowed in the second half, we appeared a completely different team altogether and we flirted with danger, leading to that howler by our ‘keeper that gave the Flames a lifeline. The challenge of tiki-taka, from what I observed in that game against Malawi, is that our boys and our coaches didn’t have a Plan B, when the opposition had found a way to play us now that they were committing themselves more to every phase of play having gone a man down, and we lost our shape, clutched to straws, like drowning individuals, and were on the back foot throughout. But, then, our coach is doing this for the first time, it’s his first experiment with this system at this level of the game and, until that game against Malawi, he had never experienced a game-situation where his Plan A would fail, in the second half playing against 10-men, and that he couldn’t respond was because he had never faced such a scenario before. Against Lesotho, in the semi-final, there was no tiki-taka throughout the 90 minutes, and Pagels has conceded that the team didn’t play well but just did enough to beat Lesotho, which we should always do, especially when you consider that the same team conceded 11 goals, on its two away 2014 World Cup games, against Zambia and Ghana. Pagels is a good man, a very good man, and the more that I have seen him endure the torture of his team’s trials and tribulations in Zambia, the more that I have drawn closer to him and I have to say that it’s sad that he is leaving because, in terms of football development, we could have used this man to shape our game from grassroots. I have my questions about Pagels the national coach, and even if he wins the Cosafa Cup today, it won’t change that because the Nations Cup and World Cup assignments are different beasts to Cosafa. Angola sent their Under-23 team to Zambia, Gordon Igesund was barred from picking the best Kaizer Chiefs players and all players from Orlando Pirates in his Bafana Bafana team, and to their credit, his makeshift team took Zambia all the way and were unlucky to lose that semi-final. It’s hard to read anything, of substance, from this Cosafa Cup, even if we win it today, but what we can’t take away from such a success story is that it will usher in a breeze of goodwill into our game and God knows how much we badly need that. Sharuko on Saturday
Posted on: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 06:01:20 +0000
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