WARRIORS coach Kalisto Pasuwa says he has not completely shut the door on England-based stars Tendai Darikwa and Brendan Galloway, who play for English Premiership football sides Burnley and West Bromwich Albion respectively.
BY TAWANDA TAFIRENYIKA
The duo has previously turned down the offer to play for the Warriors, but Pasuwa is still hopeful he can convince them to make it into the squad for the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) finals in Gabon next January.
Pasuwa reckons he has to assemble the best possible squad for the continent’s premier football tournament, where Zimbabwe will be making their third appearance.
“As the technical team, we are always looking for good players and as for the England-based guys like Darikwa and Galloway, they have not been responding positively to come and play for the national team,” said Pasuwa.
“Maybe it’s because they are still weighing their options to see if they could play for Zimbabwe or England. But we will try to reconsider them in the build-up to the January tournament if they are available. They might have made a decision on the national team they want to play for,” added Pasuwa.
The 20-year-old Galloway, who is on loan at West Brom from Everton, has featured for England at junior level and fancies his chances of eventually becoming a fully-fledged England international.
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The left-back was born in Harare before relocating to England at the age of six.
As for Darikwa, the 24-year-old right-back, who is also at home playing as a midfielder, was born to expatriate Zimbabwean parents in Nottingham and raised in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, which makes him eligible to represent both Zimbabwe and England.
However, the Burnley defender gave a subtle hint that he could be considering a future with the Warriors, who impressed him with their victory over Swaziland in their Afcon 2017 Group L qualifier early this year.
Darikwa had been called to be part of the squad in the two matches against Swaziland, but he told Zifa he could not make it, as he had personal issues to sort out.
He, however, congratulated the Warriors for their victory.
“Well done @online_zifa on today’s result,” the 24-year-old wrote on Twitter at the time, in a post accompanying the Zimbabwean flag. Pasuwa omitted Darikwa and Galloway from the Warriors squad that is set to travel to Guinea today for their final Group L qualifying match set for Sunday.
Kick-off at the Stade du 28 Septembre is 7pm local time.
The Warriors, who have already qualified for the finals, will be hoping to get a positive result in the dead rubber match in Conakry to complete an unprecedented unbeaten record in the Afcon qualifiers.
Pasuwa’s men are unbeaten in five games in the qualifiers in which they have won three — twice against Malawi and once against Swaziland — and drawn at home to Guinea and away to Swaziland for an unassailable 11 points.
While Pasuwa wants to end the campaign on a high note to maintain their impressive record, he is already looking beyond the Guinea match.
Part of the plan is to play friendly matches against nations like Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt as part of preparations for the January tournament.
Previously though, Pasuwa’s bosses have failed to organise high-profile friendlies for all the national football teams, and that has forced him to call a largely unchanged squad for the qualifiers as he seeks continuity.
“Our situation in Zimbabwe is different from a team like, let’s say, South Africa, who have the luxury of playing many friendly matches. For us, we have problems in terms of organising friendly matches, so I need continuity because for me to be changing a team nearly every day would be a problem.
“Remember, when we started these qualifiers, we had most of the players from the Under-23 side and we were combining with some of the seniors who were coming in, so we are still looking at some of those players again, we are rotating them. As for the combinations, we need time to have combinations, clicking,” Pasuwa said.
“If I see two or three players in the local league playing well, we can take them, but not the bulk of the players as people might want. We need continuity,” he added.
