News that Liverpool’s Trey Nyoni refused to meet Warriors coach Mario Marinica with regards to his future with the Warriors speaks loudly that the aspiring England international is not interested in turning out for the Warriors.
Fine. Some say the approach was wrong. Instead of Nyoni travelling from Liverpool to Birmingham to meet Marinica, the opposite should have been ideal. However, we feel and believe that the response would have been the same.
Nyoni has a choice to represent either England- his place of birth - or Zimbabwe - his place of origin - but seems to favour the Three Lions instead of our beloved Warriors.
However, we feel that there is no need to kneel down and beg players like Nyoni who think big of themselves when in reality they are just as good, but not better than those we already have.
For his information, a lot of talent floods in our changing room in the form of Jordan Zemura, Tawanda Maswanhise, Tawanda Chirewa, Marshall Munetsi, Jonah Fabisch, Daniel Musendami, Sean Fusire, Thando Ngwenya, and Tadiwa Chakuchichi who can drive the Warriors high up there.
We believe with the players we already have and those across the globe, who have expressed their willingness to turn out for Zimbabwe, the Warriors can qualify for World Cup 2030.
Surely, we cannot take away the fact that Nyoni is a fine player but we have had too many players like him who turned their backs on their countries of origin only to come back begging for a place.
Maybe, Nyoni is being big headed because of the crown of being the youngest player ever to feature for Liverpool, but that is nothing but just a club record and not an international record.
Some even jokingly said that record is no different from that of 13-year-old Ethan Tamson who made his debut for Mwos and became the youngest ever player to turn out for a Premiership club in Zimbabwe.
Surely had Nyoni been as good as he thinks he is -- or those close to him are telling him -- he would now had been a regular in the Liverpool starting line up or on the bench in high profile matches.
He might try to hide his Zimbabwean and African identity by thinking he is English because he was born in the United Kingdom, but a Nyoni is a Zimbabwean and that will not change because of his or her place of birth.
What some of us do not like is for Zifa in future to accept and give chances to players like Nyoni who turn to Zimbabwe and African teams only after failing to make the grade in national teams of their adopted countries.
We have Afcon 2027 and World Cup 2030 and we need players who are committed to our cause and not those who feel, there is nothing to gain in playing for Zimbabwe.
Sense should be knocked into Nyoni’s head that there is no player who is bigger than the team and whoever he thinks he is, he will never be bigger than the Warriors of Zimbabwe.
Anyway, we say thank you to Isaac Mabaya for agreeing to meet Marinica -- who some have nicknamed Makanica -- and we hope Mabaya will make a decision that is best for himself and for Zimbabwe.
We also applaud Zifa for giving Marinica the chance to travel, meet, and talk to the players we need for future engagements although we feel that Marinica alone was not enough.
We believe, there is no better time than now to start preparing for the 2027 Afcon qualifiers and we hope that when the games come, Marinica would have drawn up a list of players we will be proud.
Qualification for World Cup 2030 should be our ultimate goal.