Zebras at 149 and may be pragmatism is the answer

Mqondisi Dube | Monday March 27, 2023 16:00

This is just 16 spots off their worst ever position of 165 recorded way back in 1999. The Zebras suffered another loss on Friday, going down 2-0 to Equatorial Guinea in an Africa Cup of Nations qualifier.

This means the national team has gone eight matches without a victory, which should be a worrying statistic for coach, Mogomotsi ‘Teenage’ Mpote. Mpote will be asking for an immediate response from his boys when they host Equatorial Guinea in the reverse fixture at the Obed Itani Chilume Stadium tomorrow.

Any result other than a win will mean the Zebras’ interest in the AFCON qualifiers ends early, which has become the norm more than an exception in recent years.

One has to rewind back to around 2015 when the Zebras really carried some threat, as they beat Mali and Burkina Faso in succession, with Peter Butler at the helm. It will not be amiss to say the Botswana Football Association (BFA) made a rushed decision by getting rid of the Englishman at the time, as he clearly had a roadmap and introduced countless young talent into the national team set-up. But it will be unfair to ‘Teenage’ to talk about Butler at this time. Mpote needs to be given time to make progress or make his own bed. The nation wants Mpote to succeed and take the Zebras back to the 2012 era, when the team qualified for its first ever AFCON finals.

As the Zebras fail to recover from a more than decade long Africa Cup of Nations hang-over, the magnitude of Stanley Tshosane’s achievements is now amplified with each passing game.

The Zebras are still searching for answers as the 2012 moment remains the only time the team qualified for the AFCON finals. The glorious moment is now fading into distant memory as it’s more than a decade since the nation was covered in euphoria. Successive coaches have tried but failed to take the team to its second AFCON finals.

Now may be its worth revisiting what Tshosane did right. It was under Tshosane that Botswana registered its best FIFA ranking of 53. Tshosane had a quality squad but still falling short of the standards that the likes of Guinea and Mali possessed. The team was still behind most of the continental giants in terms of man-to-man or pound-for-pound talent.

But Tshosane proved to be a tactical genius despite an underwhelming response from local fans who felt the man was playing boring football. Tshosane had a reason to opt for defensive football, which was not necessarily pleasing to the eye.

Tshosane chose pragmatism over exuberance, and he got it spot on. He once indicated that there was no use in attacking quality teams like Tunisia and leaving gaps all over the pitch for the opponents to explore.

He then went for a compact formation which saw most players behind the ball, while gunslinger, Jerome ‘JJ’ Ramatlhwakwana was given the responsibility to perform the perfect heist up top.

It worked wonders as the Zebras, for the first time, achieved back-to-back victories over former champions Tunisia. The situation has changed and it might not be necessary for Mpote to take the exact leaf from Tshosane’s book, but a philosophy re-think will not be suicidal. Pragmatism could once again, bail the Zebras out of the mud.