The four nations used the tournament to prepare for the 2026 World Cup qualifiers to be played in June.

Yesterday, a report claimed that Itay-based wing-back Jordan Zemura had threatened to withdraw from future Warriors call-ups as long as Mapeza “does not change his treatment of England-born players and his player management style’’.

Zemura himself did not make the remarks but they were attributed to a source within his camp.

Speaking to The Herald about the issue, Mapeza expressed surprise over the accusations, saying Zemura may have been unhappy for getting limited game time at the tournament. He said:

Maybe the problem was that he didn’t play as much as he would have liked. I told him Jordan you have changed a little bit in terms of your attitude. Last year you were pushing, you wanted to play, what is going on?

That’s what I asked him and he said no coach I am fine but I will sort it out. That’s what I spoke to him about. I am a coach and I can see when a player is having challenges.

Mapeza also explained why he substituted Zemura against Zambia and his decision to leave him out of the final against Kenya. He said:

I had seen him and I wanted someone who is more like a midfielder. The formation we were playing didn’t have natural wingers.

He plays left-back most of the time, like the other game that I saw him playing against Inter-Milan.

I talk to everybody. I told him I want you to play here and he said it’s okay coach. Then I substituted him. So does he mean he didn’t want to be substituted? Is he now a Maradona?

That’s the problem at the end of the day. To be honest with you, I respect football players but I believe football is all about teamwork.

It’s not about an individual. It’s not about Zemura, Marshall Munetsi, or Knowledge Musona. It’s about collective effort. That he did not play the second game was more tactical than anything else.

Mapeza also disputed comments attributed to Zemura, that his training methods were too physical leaving players with no recovery plan for the next match-day. He said:

How are my training methods military style when I have only been with these guys a few days?

Zemura and the other foreign-based guys arrived on a Tuesday night and we trained once on Wednesday in the morning.

Then in the afternoon, everyone went to watch the Zimbabwe Under-20 match against Malawi Under-20. We trained twice on Thursday and once on Friday.

On Saturday we played against Zambia. That was that. You can ask Captain Marshall Munetsi and any other player who was there. So, was that military training?

Since we were going to have a game on Friday, we had tactical drills to demonstrate how we were going to play.

Afterwards, we did video analyses of the previous games; we made corrections and that’s what we were doing. There wasn’t much, I think, and someone claims military training.

Mapeza said players must adhere to the national coach’s training methods during their time in the Warriors camp, recognizing that these approaches differ from those employed by their respective clubs. He said:

Maybe these guys have their certain way of doing things at their clubs. But I can’t follow the programme of his coach in Italy.

This is a national team and we have only two to three days and I do what I feel is going to be good for these guys. Why only he and all the other players have not complained?

You can ask any player; we just did the normal training sessions.

We gave them off the other day. I have my programme as a coach the other day we were invited to a tree-planting day and I asked them that we have breakfast at 7 AM since the tree-planting programme was at 9 AM.

They should understand because we had a programme given to us by the tournament organisers.

More: Pindula News