Our game has over the years suffered due to the non-emergence on the Zimbabwe football scene of exceptionally gifted young football players.
Attendances at football matches have dipped heavily as there are no heroes to turn on the style in the manner in which the likes of Moses Chunga, Archieford Chimutanda, Peter Ndlovu, Stix Mtizwa, the late Joel Shambo and Stanley Ndunduma did.
Before then - we are told - there were the likes of George Shaya, Robert Godoka, Moses Moyo, Joseph Zulu, George Rollo, the Chieza brothers, Tendai, Itai and Isaac, who wooed crowds with their playing style.
Sadly, that attraction is gone, and the stadiums are flooded with old age players who are being recycled every season by moving from one club to the other and then back the other year.
There was a time when Zimbabwe exported not one or four but more than eight players in one year to the South African Premiership most of whom went on to become the best players in that country.
The South African football public is still talking with affection about what Tinashe Nengomasha, Benjani Mwaruwari, Willard Katsande, Knowledge Musona, and Khama Billiat, gave to their football.
At one time, Caps United alone, sold Method Mwanjali, Nyasha Mushekwi, and Simba Sithole to cash rich Mamelodi Sundowns but today, the Green Machine do not have a single player good enough to attract clubs in the Motsepe First Division -- the South African Division One league.
The last recognisable if not remembered Zimbabwean football export was Bill Antonio who left Dynamos in 2022 to join modest Belgian club KV Mechelen.
- Where has the football talent gone to?
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What is interesting, though, is that Antonio had to be seconded to Mechelen's developmental side as the club felt he needed reconditioning even though he was coming from Zimbabwe's top football league and Zimbabwe's most successful football team.
Surely, does this mean that our football development programme is so poor that a player coming from the Castle Lager Premier Soccer League is deemed not good enough even on the substitute's bench of a club as small as Mechelen ?
For the record, Mechelen are not among the top five teams in the Belgian Pro-League and that honour belongs to Genk, Club Brugge, Union St Guilloise, Anderlecht, and Royal Antwerp.
For those not in the know-how, Zimbabwe's own Knowledge Musona once played for Anderlecht while Marvelous Nakamba was a regular for Club Brugge before leaving to join Aston Villa in the English Premiership.
What is surprising about the whole Zimbabwean football situation is that there are too many 'academies' scattered all over the country yet there are no exciting products coming through.
In fact, in every suburb in every city or town all over Zimbabwe, there are one or two so called football academies but there is no talent coming out of them to feed the national football system.
One football follower even jokingly said in Zimbabwe, we take an academy to mean a gathering of young football loving boys with a former footballer as coach and asking them to kick the ball around and run up and down the field as directed by training cones.
Although there are one or two genuine ones, most of them are asking parents to pay huge sums of money for their children to kick the ball around and run up and down the field when it is the academy itself which is supposed to invest in high level coaching, equipment, and the school needs of the young players in question.
On that premise, Zifa should have a relook at this whole academy system and ensure that guidelines regarding the operation of an academy are followed as everyday every Jack and Jill is waking up to claim he has set up an academy.
Surely, the truth is that Zimbabwe has a huge reservoir of young football talent but it is the way we are doing things which is wrong.
We are starting everything at the top and believe that only the Warriors is football forgetting that the game has a pyramid shape and is built from the bottom up to the top.
Even the school football system for which Zifa had a huge interest has long been forgotten and abandoned and nobody - at the top - seems interested with what is happening there.
We need to revive our junior football which has been hacked to pieces by reintroducing Under 15, Under 17, and Under 20 league football as used to happen during the days of the Zimbabwe Junior Football Association.
We have provincial representatives in the Zifa Assembly and their task should be to see to it that junior league football returns in their areas and the sooner they do that, the better.
Surely, we miss the days when our junior football was heavily supported by companies like Bonar, Manica Freight, and National Foods with teams competing at regional level from where provincial teams were selected for inter-provincial competitions.
From the inter-provincial competitions, national teams were selected and not today when the Zimbabwe Under 17 team
