# The Football 'Dream Team' (1993)

URL: https://allhistories.com/zimbabwe/timeline/1993-the-football-dream-team
Location: Harare, Zimbabwe
Themes: main-event

Football was the most popular sport among Black Zimbabweans, with clubs such as Dynamos, Highlanders and CAPS United drawing huge crowds. Rhodesia had been barred from international football for most of the UDI period, and the national team, known as the Warriors, struggled in the 1980s. Under the German coach Reinhard Fabisch, appointed in 1992, the Warriors built a team known as the 'Dream Team', featuring the Liverpool goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar, a European Cup winner in 1984, and the Coventry City forward Peter Ndlovu, who had joined the English club in 1991 and became one of the first African players in the new Premier League. In qualification for the 1994 World Cup the team won a memorable home victory over Cameroon in Harare but finished behind the Cameroonians, and it also narrowly missed the 1994 Africa Cup of Nations. The Dream Team is remembered as a golden generation that united supporters across the country. Zimbabwe finally qualified for its first Africa Cup of Nations in 2004, with Ndlovu as captain. Football remained a vital part of popular culture, though it also suffered tragedies such as the stampede at the National Sports Stadium in July 2000. At this point in the timeline (1992–1994), the President of Zimbabwe was Robert Mugabe (31 December 1987 – 21 November 2017).

## Why it matters
The Dream Team was Zimbabwean football's golden generation and a source of national pride in the early 1990s.

Ruler at the Time: [Robert Mugabe](https://allhistories.com/zimbabwe/rulers/robert-mugabe)

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — Zimbabwe national football team](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwe_national_football_team)
- [Wikipedia — Peter Ndlovu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Ndlovu)
- [Wikipedia — Bruce Grobbelaar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Grobbelaar)
- [BBC Sport](https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football)
- [Wikipedia — Independence and The Mugabe Years (period overview)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Zimbabwe)