How Taifa Stars lost to Cote d’Ivoire

Dar es Salaam. Taifa Stars have once again failed to kill the jinx as they are out of the battle for a place in the 2014 World Cup finals to be held in Brazil next year.

For a serious football analyst who doesn’t want to be influenced by Tanzanian sports writers who, in some cases, wrongly praise our players to be very good while they are not, knew that the team could not qualify.

It is not that we did not have trust in coach Kim Poulsen, but rather the team went on along the same technical mistakes which had dearly cost the team earlier.

Luckily enough, I had an opportunity to coach teams in Denmark while pursuing my PhD at the Royal Agricultural College in Copenhagen.

I was the guest coach of the Danish Football Association known as DBU and after some discussion, the DBU assigned me to be a guest coach of Lyngby FC, a first division club, and worked very closely with their senior coach, Paul Hansen.

What I realised during my training stint in Denmark was that, Danes can produce very good football coaches to the extent that I even convinced Paul Hansen to come to Tanzania to coach some of the leading clubs, believing that he would give our football a new ‘flavor.’

When I met Kim Poulsen for the first time at the TFF offices two or so years ago as the youth team coach, I informed him of having coached a Premier League side in Denmark, and he happened to know Paul Hansen. I thus still have faith with Danish coaches.

Regarding the tactical inefficiencies Taifa stars, I wrote five articles in The Citizen on Saturday which, if the team’s technical bench had bothered to read, I am sure some improvements could have been made during our encounter with Cote d’Ivoire. The team’s technical weaknesses in the match against the Ivorians were as follows:

Defenders fell victims of basic mistakes

Here are common mistakes our defenders kept committing: poor communication thus could not have a common and an agreed approach to an impending attack; ball watching instead of assigning one player to confront an approaching player; the blind side player not covering and failing to pick an unmarked player playing behind the defenders, trying to intercept a ball which you cannot intercept and lack of support play.

These are the basic things a coach should emphatically insist on defenders not to commit because regardless of how players have been trained, if these are not repeatedly provided to the players, they will cost the team.

You might be having very good individual five defenders but if they do not observe the common mistakes, the team will concede easy goals.. This is exactly what happened during Taifa Stars encounter with the Ivorians. The first and fourth goals were too easy goals a team which is vying to qualify for the World Cup.

Orthodox midfielders playing too many square passes and not effectively utilizing moments in football as midfielders.

This has been a consistent problem for the national team, playing square passes instead of penetration passes. One should know that by playing square passes you are making it possible for the team to be vulnerable to attacks.

Fans simply will praise the team by saying yes we have been defeated but our team played well. That is myopic thinking, I have always differed with fans after every Stars match when I try to say the contrary. Look at the way Yaya Toure was delivering his passes.

Most of them were penetration passes which were timely meant to correct space and put the ball along the ground which made it possible for the player receiving the pass to easily continue on with the pass.

A good example was the way the fourth goal was scored. A first time penetration pass from Yaya went straight to Giovinho path and poor Nyoni was caught off track for the attacker to deliver a cross resulting in conceding a simple goal.

The orthodox midfielders more than often failed to utilise the three moments as midfielders. The moments are: as you are receiving the ball, you must make a definite decision as to whether: you will play first time through pass without stopping the ball along the direction of the ball, hold the ball because your team mates are not in advantageous positions or change the direction of play.

These moments were not observed thus delivering balls which were easily won by opponents and immediate counter attacks. These moments were (and are usually) observed by Yaya Toure. Wing attackers not purposefully driving the ball towards opponent’s goal.

Our orthodox wing attackers played too much inside the central midfield positions thus failing to drive the ball towards opponent’s ball because usually the midfield positions are crowded. They could have spent more time in attacking through the flanks where there is a situation of one against one thus easily destabilising the opponent’s defense.

Yes, I know that wing attackers are supposed to play as midfielders as well, but the mistake they repeatedly made was that they were both playing in the centre of the field. .

The best approach would have been for instance, when the team attacks through the right side, the right side wing attacker should play wide (along the touch line) while the blind side wing attacker plays in the deep midfield because under such a situation the orthodox attacking midfielder will be called into action.

This is hardly seen with our team, most often, the team depends on the wing defenders who being defenders first, will not effectively participate in every move. Look at how Kalou and Geovinho were using the flanks and they purposefully drove the ball to destabilize the defence and made killer crosses.

Players not playing in positions they could be more effective and poor substitution.

We all know that much as Kapombe is taken as a utility player, but being mainly left legged and his size, the most effective position for him to be more effective is playing as a right wing defender not as a left wing defender.

Tanzania has a number of promising players in this position like Yangas Luhende, just to mention one. As regards to substitution, I was baffled by the way the substitution was done.

My opinion is; as the team was piling pressure in the major part of the second half, the coach should have taken Kazimoto out and introduce Athuman Idd so that Domayo could move upfront because he has the long-range shooting power.

The good thing with Idd is that he is a very good defending midfielder and has power play and also the ability to accurately change play to both flanks.

By so doing, we could have attacked by using the whole width (thereby spreading the defense to deny them support play and creating a situation of one to one to who ever had played wide) as Idd could feed them with long accurate balls and Domayo having more time to play as a blind side striker. Instead, he brought in Mcha and later Vicent Barnabas as a wing defender.

Barnabas is of more help to the team when he plays as a wing attacker. The problem as I had previously said in my articles is that we are selecting national team players from the Premier league, but, believe me, there are very many good players in the other leagues who are not considered. With all these tactical problems in this match, we deserved a wide margin defeat.

These are my own views, I am sure other senior coaches have valuable tactical observations which could assist the technical bench.

I believe no Tanzanian football coach is happy with the team failing to clinch any worth while trophy, let alone qualifying despite the hefty support the sponsors are providing.

My advice to the technical bench and the players is that, don’t discourage the football loving Tanzanians and all key players such as politicians and sponsors.