AFC Bournemouth
Jordan Zemura became the latest Cherries international on Thursday evening, and the first to represent Zimbabwe as he started for the Warriors in their Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against reigning champions Algeria.
The Cherries left-back played the first 70 minutes in Algiers, with Zimbabwe eventually losing 3-1 to a side led by talisman Riyad Mahrez.
The London-born 20-year-old - Zemura turns 21 this Saturday - joined AFC Bournemouth in May 2019 and has this season made the breakthrough into the first team, impressing against Premier League sides Crystal Palace and Manchester City in the Carabao Cup.
In October of last year Zemura sat down with the club's media team to talk about his start to life with the Cherries, a conversation which included discussion of his now-fulfilled hopes of playing for Zimbabwe.
Your parents moved to the UK just before you were born, how does potentially playing for Zimbabwe make you feel?
The idea of playing for your country is surreal, it’s what you dream of when you’re a kid. Now I’m a bit older and the opportunity could arise I’m really excited, I’m still humble from how I’ve been raised by my family and they tell me not to think too much about something that hasn’t happened yet.
If I could pull on the shirt and represent Zimbabwe then I’d be thinking what I can achieve, how I can help and give another child in Zimbabwe the inspiration to see what can be done. They’re the next generation, and there is talent both there and in England with players who can represent Zimbabwe.
Before games, my mum always sends me a text message which gets me in the right head shape, my dad will send me over the night before what he wants me to do and concentrate on. Then I’ll also have a lot of family members at home, watching everything on Twitter and following the game to see how I’m doing.
Being at Bournemouth is such a big platform for me, and I want to inspire people and see the country do really well.
What have been your opening impressions of AFC Bournemouth?
Since coming here I’ve seen that it’s a massive family. It’s not my first time moving away and living in digs but coming to Bournemouth is two or three hours away from home. The first people I lived with were so caring and lovely and made me feel at home.
I do get homesick and miss my family but the club welcomed me and the ethos is right there as soon as you arrive: work hard, be AFCB fit and I could see that straight away and I wanted to be a part of it.
Does that ethos away from the pitch also extend onto it?
One hundred percent, in training exactly what is laid out is what we have to do on a matchday. That’s the only way you can play better and gain more and more experience in how you do certain things.
For instance, the day before a match we will vigorously work on a certain kind of shape, certain movements and you’ll wonder whether it will happen in a game and then you kick-off and all the patterns we’ve worked on and the secret things we do to unsettle the opposition are laid out right in front of us. It’s surreal how important the details are.
With that in mind do you have to be especially football smart here?
Of course, I kid you not, with the names we have for certain plays you could easily get lost! If I said ‘Dennis’ no-one would know what I meant except my team-mates; you have to be ready and it’s not just what you do with your feet, it’s in your mind as well.
When you see a player in a position in your head you have to react and quickly get to where you need to be. You have to be brain smart, the coaches always tell us how vital awareness is and you can’t just be reactive to what’s happening.
You have to be proactive, when you’re reactive you might think things are fine then you look up and a player could have moved past you.
You’ve also trained and played in friendlies with the first team, how have you found that?
It's challenging, but everything we’ve done in the under-21s with Shaun Cooper is almost exactly the same. With the first team it’s a little bit more intense and with more details because you have to have that in the Premier League.
As younger players that’s what we’re aspiring to be and Coops tells us that any experience we get with the first team is gold. When we train with them we see the same movements we use with the under-21s, it’s the care and detail that you see all the way up from the younger levels to the first team. That makes you feel more comfortable in what you’re doing.
