Talent Chawapiwa is no doubt the biggest talent of the recent COSAFA tournament. Many are asking where this talented man was all along? A good passer of the ball, this speedy and skilful player should have been crowned the player of the tournament! He came with no less than 4 goals assists and also scored 2 brilliant goals and capped the tournament with a man of the match award on the final match which was won by Zimbabwe.
He chose the COSAFA tourney to show the nation and the world at large the talent that abounds in the country! Many questions are being asked by many soccer fans and the first one is ‘Where was Talent all along?’ Why was he not showcasing all of these skills at club level? Surely had he been included in the warriors team that played Liberia, perhaps we could have added our goal tally to 4 or 5?
Inorder to answer the question of where Talent was, we will quote soccer legend and analyst Alois Bunjira who has this to say about the talented Talent:
‘At FC Platinum Chawapiwa plays in gear number 5 at 200km/h while the other players are in gear 3 at 80km/h.He goes with the ball forward …and finds noone in support..and has to turn back.That assist for Mushure, I am sure at FC Platinum the closest player supporting him would still be in the centre circle jogging forward.He is then forced to dribble backwards…..and some people see it as he is not playing well. At FC they cannot compliment his pace’
The talented talent is not being used effectively at club level because of his lightning speed and superb talent. These are the weaknesses that were observed by the Warriors coach Sunday Chidzambwa, he corrected the weaknesses by ensuring that Talent had support whenever he rushed into the penalty box. The result is the brilliant performance of 4 goal assists, 2 goals and a man of the match performance in the final game against our rivals north of Zambezi.
Lessons learnt for Entrepreneurs
You may be another Talent Chawapiwa, brilliant ideas-full of innovation but lack supportive systems of an enabling environment. We have seen this with a number of talented youngsters who are developing brilliant Apps which are finding no takers. One such App was developed by a youngster who is a member of this forum. He developed an App that helps to solve the issue of poultry farmers who face problems of marketing their chickens. The App developed helps to connect farmers with potential buyers. If you would like chickens, you simply log in and connect with various chicken farmers with chickens for sale.
How has been the response by the market? The response has been lukewarm-few took notice, few registered and we are sure that the youngster should be a disappointed man. Here was a free service to help the nation with marketing problems so why few takers? The reason for this response is simple-the youngster is in the same situation with Talent, as Alois Bunjira puts it’ travelling at 200km/hr in gear 5 whilst everyone is travelling at 80km/hr in gear number 3.
Does this mean you have to reduce speed? No, not at all….keep shining, keep flying high, keep innovating. The rest of the nation maybe taking time to appreciate Apps but they soon will with time. He has already assessed the problems with uptakes of Apps and its time to go back to the drawing board. Did he market it well? Did he involve the users of the innovation? Did he work with poultry producers, poultry farmers associations? Did he approach poultry companies for possible partnerships?
All of these questions will help him relaunch the Mobile App and ensure that it is well marketed and received by users. His time will definitely come like what Talent recently did in South Africa at the COSAFA Tourney.
