Zimbabwe Team Soccer

From Robson Sharuko in CAIRO, Egypt ZIMBABWE’S Warriors have settled down at their base in Port Said on the Meditteranean coast but their first day at the office in their adopted home was again plagued yesterday by the uncertainty surrounding the arrival of their chief striker Benjani Mwaruwari, who is still holed up in England. The Warriors, who arrived in Port Said on Wednesday night after a road trip from the capital Cairo, held their first training session yesterday morning and were due to hold another two-hour session last night starting at 7pm.

The 7pm-9pm sessions have been designed against the background that Zimbabwe will play its matches here in cooler night temperatures under floodlights.

The Warriors became the second team to book into their hotel after the Black Stars of Ghana.

Originally, all four Group D teams — Zimbabwe, Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal — had been booked to stay in the same hotel.

The Confederation of African Football booked the four teams into the Halnanport Said, a seaside hotel in the resort city.

But the Teranga Lions chose to stay in Ismailia, where they will foot their own bills, rather than stay at the same hotel with their rivals.

The Warriors will stay at the same hotel but have made separate arrangements about their kitchen after securing an Italian restaurant, based at the same hotel, which they will use for their cooking and meals.

The national team carries its own food supplies and moves with its own chef who prepares traditional home dishes like sadza for the players and their technical staff.

There had been concern within the Zimbabwean community here that the safety of the Warriors’ food supplies could not be guaranteed if kept in the kitchen at the hotel that would be accessible to the other rival teams.

The Italian restraurant will be closed for the duration of the Warriors’ stay at the hotel and will be converted into an exclusive Warriors’ restaurant — thanks to a deal facilitated by the Minister Counsellor at the Zimbabwe Embassy here in Cairo, Kufa Chinoza.

Nigeria were by late afternoon yesterday still to check into the hotel although not many would be surprised if they have already made their own special arrangements.

Zimbabwe coach Charles Mhlauri said his team had settled down well in their new base but did not give his seal of approval on the pitch that his team used for their training session.

The Warriors have spent their last two weeks on a training camp in France and Morocco and might have been spoiled by the good quality of pitches in the two countries.

"Of course, this is not the main pitch that we would be using for our matches. We have been slotted to practice on the main pitch tomorrow (today).

"Senegal have been slotted to use the same main pitch for their training session on Saturday.

"We have also had to move to our own private restaurant for our cooking facilities and meals because of some of the concerns that have been raised."

But it was not a good start for the Warriors in their exclusive private restaurant.

Their chef could not prepare their traditional lunch yesterday, maybe because of the movement of utensils and food supplies. "But he will cook in the evening," said Mhlauri.

Port Said is generally colder than Cairo because of the massive water bodies on its coastline.

Temperatures in Port Said drop steeply during the night.

But Mhlauri appears not concerned about the weather conditions after taking his team to the freezing temperatures in France where they spent a week in Auxerre.

Europe has been gripped by a bitterly cold winter, one of the coldest in recent years, with temperatures dropping to minus 50 degress Celsius in some parts of Russia.

The Warriors also spent five days in Morocco, a country that also has a Meditteranean climate like Egypt and are likely to find the conditions in Port Said very familiar.

But while the Warriors settled into their stride at their new base, there was still concern over the availability of influential forward Benjani Mwaruwari.

Mhlauri said yesterday that team manager Ernest "Mapepa" Sibanda was battling to contact Portsmouth over the availability of Mwaruwari for the training camp ahead of the Warriors’ first match on Monday.

Mwaruwari is scheduled to play for Portsmouth in an English Premiership basement battle against Birmingham at St Andrews tomorrow.

That means he will only be available either very late tomorrow night, depending on his flight arrangements, or on Sunday. With the game against the Teranga Lions scheduled for Monday, that is very, very late by any normal arrangements.

This means that Mwaruwari might just have one training session, if ever there would be one, on the eve of the match.

With other forwards having been in camp for the full period in the last two weeks, the Mwaruwari scenario is getting interesting by each day and appears to be pushing Mhlauri into a very difficult corner at a time when he needs unity in his camp.

The last thing that the young coach needs is a disruptive influence in his camp, with voices being raised about the unfairness of a situation where he will be seen to be giving preferential treatment to some players.

No one doubts Mwaruwari’s quality but certain rules have to be observed if the unity in camp is going to be preserved.

Mhlauri said on Wednesday that he had been advised by team manager Ernest Sibanda that Mwaruwari would be arriving yesterday. But The Undertaker did not show up and it appears that Portsmouth have, for now, won the battle for his rights. Mhlauri has already shown that he could be tough and last year he wielded the axe on midfielder Edelbert Dinha after he reported late for camp. Of course, Mwaruwari is not the same as Dinha and a player who splashed a fortune to host the Warriors at a training camp in Europe deserves a special kind of treatment. But time is running out for The Undertaker and it appears that it’s coming to a point where he might not be prepared, especially mentally, to the Nations Cup cause given the pressure that he is under at his new club Portsmouth.

The Warriors are not the only team facing this dilemma.

Already Ghana have been forced to release their captain Stephen Appiah to play for his Turkish club Fernebahce today and then come back here in time for the Black Stars’ first match against Nigeria on Monday. Please send us Feedback