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OpenNees Needs More Time To Finalise Warriors' Squad For World Cup Qualifiers
Warriors coach Michael Nees has postponed the announcement of the squad for the upcoming 2026 World Cup Qualifiers against Nigeria and Benin to allow more time for evaluating locally-based players, as the league season has just begun.
Zimbabwe will face Benin on March 20 in Durban, South Africa, before travelling to Uyo, Nigeria, for their second match against the Super Eagles on March 25.
Nees said that since the Warriors players are spread across different parts of the world, he requires more time to properly assess their performances. He said:
We have a diverse team. I said it before — a three-group team — diverse in terms of the fact that you have a group from overseas, that is Europe, Teenage (Hadebe), also from the USA, and General (Gerald Takwara), now in Iraq.
Then we have the South African group. Then we have the local group. In every group, the situation is different.
I said in November that my worry was always that the (local) players might not yet be in the right shape. I already expressed that.
I predicted that already, because I cannot even check a player properly over two, or three matches before I announce the squad.
It’s like a blind flight. You pick players and you aren’t sure are they fit? Are they this or that? Very difficult.
The Castle Lager Premiership is only two weeks into the new season after a two-month off-season break, and players are still working to regain full match fitness. Said Nees:
For the local group, the season hasn’t yet started properly. It just started last week. So, we watched three games (last week).
Here is the mystery with me — three games. We drove up and down. Three games. It was, right, yeah, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
Then we have the group, the other two groups; their leagues are running.
Yes, that is not such a problem. You can easily observe, you know, in Teenage’s league; they now already have four or five games in the season, so they are in season and not yet 100 per cent at the end, but there shouldn’t be a problem.
Every group has its own challenges and that’s why I could not announce the squad earlier.
More: The Sunday Mail
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