Sharuko on Saturday
ON the long flight home from Abidjan, just hours after Dynamos’ quest for the immortality of becoming the first Zimbabwean football club to be crowned champions of Africa had wilted in the intensity of the Ivorian heat, Sunday Chidzambwa asked me to take a seat beside him to reflect on the events of that afternoon.

Back in those days, we knew him as Marimo and not Chidzambwa, the man who on any given Sunday — whether as a tough centre-back or a trailblazing coach whose technical brilliance drove him to heights that are yet to be touched by his peers — would always provide the leadership his family of Glamour Boys always relied upon in their quest for greatness.

The dramatic events of that unforgettable Sunday in Abidjan had taken their toll on his battered and battle-weary troops, their failure to conquer the last team standing in a fairy-tale push for the greatness that comes with becoming champions of Africa, having both depressed and weakened them so much they had long lost the energy to keep awake and had slipped into dreamland.

But, for Sunday, as their leader, the demons of failure were wreaking havoc with his emotions he couldn’t find the peace of mind needed for a sleep as he battled a flood of questions that had no answers, trapped in the brutality of a soul-searching exercise whose pain was probably far worse than what he went through that afternoon when Joseph Zulu’s tackle inflicted an injury that brought a premature ending to his career.

And, in those desperate times, he decided he needed someone to talk to, to pour out his frustration of having come so near, yet so far, from the ultimate glory, a coach and team which the cruel world of football, which never celebrates those who come second, would soon forget as it toasted the arrival of the Ivorian giants into the special enclosure reserved for champions.

He turned to me, being one of the few who were still awake in that plane as it cut across miles of the African jungle on its southbound trip that would eventually take us home, where a nation that had been united and charmed by the heroics of these Glamour Boys, in their battle for greatness, lay in wait for us with its hearts broken by their failure to transform themselves into champions of the continent.

That I was sipping a Danish beer, whose marketing motto – “probably the best beer in the world” — provided a cruel irony to the reality that Mhofu and his troops had failed in their quest to turn themselves into “probably the best football club in Africa,” as I tried to drown my sorrows, having long lost my sense of professionalism as I joined my fellow Zimbabweans in this hour of emotional turmoil.

There comes moments, few and far between, when journalism and everything that it represents, where you aren’t supposed to be part of the story, fade away and become secondary, overwhelmed by bigger issues like a national cause and on that trip to Abidjan, Dynamos had long ceased to be a club in pursuit of its glory, but clearly, in pursuit of a nation’s glory.

Then, Mhofu spoke.

“Tough Rob, we have failed the nation,” his voice pregnant with emotion. “We tried our best, but it wasn’t our day. My team, the way I always set it up, when we score two goals, as we have done today, we usually win, because our defence is normally our biggest weapon, but today, things didn’t go according to plan.

“The sad part and that is what is making me very, very sad, is that people won’t remember the miracle that my boys have produced in this journey. Some people will mock them as failures, because they didn’t get the job done, some will even insult them for not clearing the final hurdle.

“Some people will severely criticise me, my tactics and everything, simply because we have lost this very big game and what we have achieved, coming this far, which has never been done before by a Zimbabwean football club, winning in Nigeria, beating the Tunisians, drawing in Ghana, winning in Mozambique and Malawi will all be forgotten because we didn’t complete the journey.

“It’s a ruthless and thankless job this one.”

To his eternal credit, Sunday didn’t try to find an excuse for his team’s failure in the drama that had resulted in his inspirational skipper, Memory Mucherahowa, being eliminated from the biggest battle of his career — sent to hospital by a head-butt from the Ivorians in a warm-up fracas which the hosts had choreographed to ensure they took him out of the match — while his troops fought, without their leader, in that showdown.

And, for that, he earned my respect.

AND, ALMOST TWENTY YEARS LATER, HERE WE GO AGAIN

On the eve of the 20th anniversary of that year when Sunday and his troops came close to greatness, only to suffer a barrage of severe criticism from a country that has refused to acknowledge the special nature of their achievements and adventure, we somehow find ourselves being confronted by a similar situation as our nation once again goes into another painful soul-searching exercise in the wake of the Warriors’ elimination from the Nations Cup finals at the group stage.

And, as fate would have it, it’s a member of that Glamour Boys Class of ’98, who was one of the players who had long been consumed by the comfort of sleep on that plane as we flew back home, his energy having been drained by an hour-and-half of an intense midfield battle against the sensational Donald-Olivier Sie, whose superb talent would later take him to four French clubs, including Toulouse, who is in the eye of a raging storm.

Callisto Pasuwa played in both legs of that CAF Champions League final in ’98, the entire 180 minutes in Harare and Abidjan and little did we know back then, as we flew back home on that plane licking our wounds, that he would be the one who — among those Glamour Boys — would rise to fill the big shoes his coach would leave both at Dynamos and the Warriors.

But, after repaying his old club by guiding them to four straight league titles and in the process re-establishing the domestic dominance they had lost during an extended period of decline, Pasuwa also ended the Warriors’ 10-year wait for a return to the Nations Cup finals by masterminding their successful qualifying campaign for the 2017 AFCON showcase in Gabon.

And, for the first time in the Warriors’ history, they qualified for the Nations Cup finals as winners of their group, with a game to spare, somehow transforming themselves from hopeless campaigners, who had been booted out of the preliminary round of the qualifiers by Tanzania to turn it around and take their place among the heavyweights of the game on the continent.

However, after his Warriors finished bottom of their group, becoming the first troops from this country to fail to win a game at the AFCON finals, Pasuwa’s tactics — or is it the lack of them — have come under severe scrutiny from an unforgiving nation that believes it’s our divine right to win this tournament.

Even when the opposition we face at the Nations Cup finals include players like legendary Egyptian ‘keeper Essam El-Hadary, who has raked in 146 international caps and has won four AFCON titles, as an individual, while we — as a nation — have only qualified for three Nations Cup finals.

Yes, Pasuwa isn’t perfect, he is still a very raw diamond that needs a lot of polishing and given he was the second youngest coach in Gabon, that shows he still has time on his side, in terms of developing himself into a very, very good coach and on reflection he can see there were things he could have done differently in Gabon.

Like changing his back four whose fatal shortcomings were exposed from the first game against Algeria, accepting that Elisha Muroiwa — his confidence clearly very low after a season blighted by injuries when he had not played as much football as was needed to make him deal with the challenges that come with an AFCON finals — didn’t deserve a place in that starting XI and Teenage Hadebe, who has shone brightly every time he has been tried, would have done a far better job.

Accepting that his wing defenders, while they had served him well against lesser opponents in the qualifiers, did not have the pace and positional discipline to confront the challenges of playing against such better opponents and were always found wandering elsewhere, when danger loomed, like when Mane scored at the back post without anyone challenging on that wing and weren’t supposed to be guaranteed places to play all three games as was the case in Gabon.

Accepting that Costa Nhamoinesu, for all the leadership qualities he had shown playing as a central defender against Malawi and Swaziland during the qualifiers, was probably more suited, with his pace and strength, to play on the left side of the defence where his instincts tell him he should be positioned given he plays that role for his club.

Accepting that Matthew Rusike, after that first game against Algeria, could not play the role that Knowledge Musona plays and there was need for a change of plan, or personnel and Evans Rusike, when he came in the second half against Senegal probably did better to warrant more than just playing 45 minutes.

Understanding that the opposing coaches, after the first game, had targeted Khama Billiat as our danger man and spent hours trying to find a way of how to stop him and we needed to also have reacted accordingly.

But, for all the weaknesses he showed in Gabon, the way he was exposed in those battles, I don’t think it’s fair to suggest that Pasuwa is a hopeless coach and I also feel it’s unfair for us to savage him as a useless coach on the basis of his performance in two games against some of the best teams on the continent.

He arrived in Gabon as a rookie, facing this kind of challenges for the first time, the only coach without the benefit that comes with playing and coaching in Europe, the only one with a captain without the benefit of playing in Europe and one of just two coaches who had an entire squad of players playing at this level of football for the first time in their careers.

Yes, as a nation, we expected more from him and our boys, a Cinderella tale like Leicester City or Zambia winning the AFCON title in 2012, but that Chipolopolo crashed out in the group stage three years later and failed to make it to Gabon and the Foxes of Leicester could be relegated this season, should have told us something about reality.

Yes, let’s accept that we had some reality checks in Gabon and that we didn’t do as well as our dreams had told us, was not because we had a coach who was hopeless, but simply because we had a coach and players who found this level a bit higher than we had anticipated.

FACTS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, ARE VERY, VERY STUBBORN

When George Mbwando said we needed someone to help Pasuwa, now that the level of the game had changed, he was severely criticised by a lot of people who said where was he when our coach was going on that overnight road trip to Malawi and winning the match and interestingly, these are the same people today who are saying George was right after all.

When the ZIFA High Performance Committee questioned the pedigree of Pasuwa’s assistants, they were heavily criticised for allegedly interfering in the coach’s job and wanting to take over the show, but now that we didn’t do very well in Gabon, the same people who were criticising Mhofu, Bambo and Rahman Gumbo are the first to say these fellows were right.

When the draw for Gabon placed us in Group B, against Algeria, Senegal and Tunisia, who are all in Africa’s top five, the same people who were saying the Warriors were going to be humiliated, would concede an average of six goals per match, would barely compete, are the same people now saying we should have won that group and qualified for the quarter-finals.

That we are a nation which, having qualified for just three AFCON finals in 36 years, only making it to the showcase just once every 12 years on average and who waited for 24 years for our first dance at the finals, is conveniently forgotten by those who say that we should be winning the tournament every time we compete there.

That our best player failed to make the grade at two obscure teams in Germany, and now finds himself playing in Belgium where all the best Belgian players play elsewhere in better and tougher leagues, isn’t taken into account by these fierce critics who are always demanding miracles.

That our second best player remains stuck in the retirement zone of South Africa, when his colleague Keegan Dolly has already made the grade to France, isn’t taken into account by these severe critics who are always saying that we should always stand, pound-for-pound, with the very best on the continent.

Guys, when our victory in Malawi at the start of the 2017 AFCON qualifiers was the first time our Warriors have won a Nations Cup qualifier away from home, since Peter Ndlovu and Tinashe Nengomasha scored in the 2-0 win over Rwanda in Kigali on July 23, 2004, losing 11 of those games and drawing only three, shouldn’t that say something about us in terms of how far we can go as a football nation?

When, after the turn of the millennium, in the AFCON qualifiers, we have only won four games away from home, drawn five and lost 14 matches, doesn’t that say something about us as a football nation and before we feast on Pasuwa, shouldn’t we look at the structural shortcomings that have ensured we don’t produce another Peter Ndlovu and another Stanley Ndunduma or another Moses Chunga?

When those whom we have beaten on the road, in the AFCON qualifiers since the turn of the millennium are Rwanda (2-0); Lesotho (1-0); Seychelles (1-0) and the Central African Republic (1-0), doesn’t that suggest Pasuwa and his boys, tried as hard as they could just to make it to Gabon, where the likes of Zambia and South Africa fell by the wayside and they need to be embraced than ridiculed.

But, as Mhofu said on that flight from Abidjan, this is a ruthless and thankless job. I just wonder what would be happening today if we were Cote d’Ivoire, the defending champions knocked out, just like us, without a win at the group stages, or Algeria — with all their galaxy of stars — who just took one point more than us in Gabon.

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Come on Warriors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Khamaldinhoooooooooooooooooo!

Text Feedback — 0719545199 (I’ve migrated to OneFusion)

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Chat with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber or read my material in The Southern Times or on www.sportszone.co.zw. The authoritative ZBC weekly television football magazine programme, Game Plan, is back on air and you can interact with me and the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika every Monday evening.

A TORTURED SOUL . . . Ghanaian football legend Sammy Kuffour can barely watch, from the SuperSport studios in Randburg, South Africa where he is working as a pundit, as the Black Stars fall in the semi-finals of the 2017 Afcon in Gabon Thursday night

Sharuko On Saturday
FOR Ghanaian football legend, Sammy Kuffour, this was as good as it gets — an unpolished football diamond of immense beauty — a stunning gem clearly crying out for the big stage of Europe where it could be showcased. And crucially where its true value could be realised. Kuffour should know, after all he comes from a country that has produced some of the finest young footballers on the continent with their Under-17 side, the Black Starlets, winning the FIFA Under-17 World Cup twice and their Under-20s being the current FIFA Under-20 World Cup holders while also winning four African Youth Championships.

And Christian Atsu, who is only 25, has already played for Chelsea, Everton, Bournemouth, Newcastle, Malaga and Porto and, at the last Nations Cup finals in 2015, he was voted Player of the Tournament, at the young age of 23, and also won the Goal of the Tournament award.

Kuffour isn’t the only one who, on fight sight, has been blown away by Billiat’s talent, and that should tell us our Ghanaian brother wasn’t just trying to sing a song that we would dance to, simply because — after spending the last month stuck in Johannesburg working for SuperSport as one of their pundits for the 2017 AFCON finals — he now feels like one of us.

When Rio Ferdinand arrived in Cape Town with his Manchester United teammates for a pre-season tour, which saw him playing against Khama for 90 minutes, the former England defender provided a brutally frank appraisal of our forward.

“If they are really youngsters, they have quite a few really good players,” Ferdinand told reporters. “Their number 11 (Khama Billiat) is their most exciting player for me.”

That was five years ago.

Against such a glowing background of heavyweight endorsements from some of the best defenders to grace world football, who should know when they really face a very, very good forward, why then is Khama still struggling to make that giant leap into Europe, the big stage where all the best players go to showcase their talents?

Back then, when Rio offered his endorsement, Khama was just a raw talent still finding his feet in Super Diski, playing for a modest club in Cape Town, still being haunted by the rejection he suffered at the hands of some CAPS United fans who felt he wasn’t good enough during the short time he spent at the Green Machine and kept questioning what Lloyd Chitembwe was seeing in him and adjusting to the culture shock that comes with living in the fast lane of one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

The boy from Mufakose who, by his father’s admission, had grown up in poverty such that getting him a pair of football boots was something his dad had to work hard for, was now a man and on the path to riches his family never dreamt about.

The Khama of today isn’t the same Khama that mesmerised Rio, but a fully-fledged professional, who has just been named the best footballer in South Africa, the second best footballer plying his trade on the continent (even though I insist he is the best), the best in-field player plying his trade in Africa and, according to the CAF experts, one of the best XI African players last year (and that includes those who are in Europe).

So, why then is one of the best XI African players still finding it difficult to make the huge leap into European football, something he has repeatedly told us is his dream, when Europe is the home to thousands of footballers from this continent?

After yet another European transfer window closed this week, with Khama is still stuck in South Africa, it inevitably provoked another fierce debate across the continent as to why our star can’t make the breakthrough that players, including some with less than a tenth of his talent, a tenth of his pace, a tenth of his wizardry and a tenth of his quality, have easily made the grade to Europe?

That Khama appeared to have boosted his profile, with a sensational individual performance against Algeria in the first game of our AFCON finals matches in Gabon, showing he can mix with the big boys and also perform at the big stage — something which is incredible given he has been running on an empty tank for some time having played non-stop competitive football for 17 months on a role that takes a lot from him given he uses a lot of his pace and energy — has made his latest rejection by European clubs even more puzzling.

If he could perform like that, coming from a background where he hasn’t rested for more than one-and-half years leading the line for both club and country, then what could he deliver if given enough time to rest, to recharge his batteries, to heal all the knocks he has taken from ruthless he has taken from defenders who have been targeting him as public enemy number one?

If he could play like that, without the benefit of the best training facilities and technical support that is guaranteed by a move to European football, wasn’t it given that he would turn into a far, far better player if exposed to such superior training facilities and getting such superior technical guidance?

Hope was everywhere and it wasn’t only confined among us, his people, his folks, who could be accused of bias in both his assessment and all the good things that we wish could happen to him in a career that we have seen rise from the dusty battlegrounds of Mufakose to the giltz of the fields of Osaka, Japan, where — for the first time in our history as a nation — we proudly had a representative gracing the prestigious FIFA Club World Cup.

But, once again, our dreams were dashed as Khama failed to make the grade and will have to wait, at least, for another six months before another window opens.

AND, SUDDENLY, THERE WERE SOME WHO WERE SAYING KHAMA IS OVERRARATED

But, as is usually the case in this country where we have a brigade of people who are quick to judge others, who also seem to thrive in negativity, who seemingly don’t want to see or hear a good story coming from here, there was an outpouring of messages pregnant with toxicity from scores of them as they started to spread the gospel that Khama isn’t as good as we claim he is.

Some even said he is just ordinary, whose profile has been overblown by the media here and local fans who have been crying out for a hero since the retirement of Peter Ndlovu, the greatest Warrior of all-time, who helped his country end more than 20 years of waiting for a place at the Nations Cup finals.

“Ndivana Sharuko vanongoti hee, mufanha uyu anogona, hee akaipa, vanonyepera vanhu,” read a chat on a WhatsApp group. “This guy is not as good as we are being made to believe and he is just an ordinary player who is standing out simply because there are too many ordinary players around.

“Dai akatamba mazuva aana Digital, Flying Doctor Murewa, Sinyo Ndunduma, The Headmaster Joel “Jubilee” Shambo, kana Willard Khumalo, hapana aimbotaura nezvake.

“He will never make it in Europe, achangoperera imomo mu Mzansi saana Tshabalala vaifunga kuti kugohwesa bhora pa World Cup ndokuita superstar.”

And, others, as usually happens during such times, asked how we even dream he could become a superstar when he finds himself the subject of lurid tabloid headlines implying he has been going out with such colourful characters like raunchy dancer Bev, spending his time in night clubs when stars like Critsiano Ronaldo are busy in the gym working to become even better.

Akomana ka!

Regai varungu vati victory has many fathers and defeat is an orphan.

Surely, can we really say Khama is not good, is average, probably a joke of an overblown talent who doesn’t deserve a crack at a club in Europe, even Belgium zvayo, even Sweden zvayo?

If he isn’t good how then did the experts at CAF pick him as one of the best XI African players last year in an All-Star team that had the likes of Serge Aurier of Paris Saint-Germain, widely considered to be one of the best three rightbacks in the world football, Aymen Abdennour of Valencia, Eric Bailly of Manchester United, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang of Norussia Dortmund), Sadio Mane of Liverpool) and Riyad Mahrez of Leicester City?

That is heavyweight company and you don’t get it simply because you happen to have some good looks but you simply earn it simply because you are good — 11 out of thousands and thousands of African footballers in the world.

To imagine that Christian Bassogog, the Cameroonian forward who has been a huge hit at the 2017 Nations Cup finals and ran half the length of the pitch to score a beauty for his team’s killer second goal against Ghana on Thursday night, didn’t even make that list, should tell us how special this Khamaldinho is.

To imagine that Cameroon captain Benjamin Moukandjo, who has been the heart-and-soul of his team in Gabon, providing both leadership and immense influence in midfield, didn’t make the list, should tell us how good this Khama boy is.

To imagine that none of the 22 players who will take to the field tomorrow, in the battle for the gold medal at the Nations Cup finals, didn’t make that list, should tell us how good our boy is.

Come on guys, let’s support our boy and we can turn our backs on him, and to start suggesting he isn’t that good, simply because — for one reason or another, including reports that there is a huge buy-out clause in his contract which is frustrating potential suitors — is certainly very, very unfair on a rare talent that has been a blessing to our football.

We should be asking questions as to why players always have to fight, to get out of Sundowns and go to Europe, with Keegan Dolly’s move to France coming close to getting a bit messy, and why Esrom Nyandoro, at the peak of his athletic powers, was not given the chance to move to Sheffield United when they showed interest in him back in the days?

Then, if we do that, we can then understand that it’s not a case that our boy isn’t good to make his move but there are too many hurdles which he must clear at a club that, given a chance, will prefer to keep him as their servant, to serve their interests, than go elsewhere because, after all, money from transfer fees doesn’t appeal to Sundowns the way it appeals to other clubs.

Their owner is a billionaire and what does a R20 million cheque from a player transfer mean to him and his bank account?

IF KHAMA ISN’T GOOD WHAT ABOUT OTHERS?

Surely, if Kermit Erasmus, the South African forward who is the same age as Khama, can make it into the French top-flight league, after scoring just 15 goals in 67 appearances during two spells at SuperSport United, at an average of 0.22 goals per match, just 17 goals in 65 matches for Orlando Pirates, at an average of 0.26 goals per game, just a single goal for Bafana Bafana in 11 matches since 2010, how can we say that our boy isn’t good enough?

If Mandla Masango, the Bafana Bafana international who is a year older than Khama and has scored 11 goals in 105 appearances for Kaizer Chiefs from 2007 to 2015, can get a move to a Danich club, as happened last year, can we claim that our boy isn’t good enough to make the grade to Europe?

Of course, Masango didn’t last long in Denmark, and he is back in South Africa where he has joined SuperSport United.

Can we say Thulani Serero, Khama’s former teammate at Ajax Cape Town who moved to Ajax Amsterdam, was far, far better than our boy and, because I always believed he wasn’t, I’m not surprised the Dutch giants have discarded him and he is just serving the last five months of his contract, playing in the reserve side, as he waits for another move.

What about Ayanda Patosi who moved to Belgium, Daylon Claasen who moved to German, Luther Singh who moved to Portugal, Bongani Zulu, Dino Ndlovu, Tokelo Rantie who use dto play in Mozambique before moving to Europe, Tefu Mashamaite, who moved to Sweden at the age of 30 only to fall out of favour at the club and is now back in South Africa, can we say all these players are better than Khama?

Some people are saying his management team has badly let him down, others are saying Khama has become too comfortable in Pretoria, just an hour or so flight from home to see dear mum, and all the stuff, but I believe that this boy is good and since he tells us he wants to play in Europe, he has the talent to make it there?

What he needs is our support and not for us to suggest that he is crap.

That is my story and I’m sticking to it!

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Come on Warriors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Khamaldinhooooooooooooooooo!

Text Feedback – 07192545199 (I migrated to One Fusion)

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Email – robsharuko@gmail.com

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Chat with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber or read my material in The Southern Times or on www.sportszone.co.zw. The authoritative ZBC weekly television football magazine programme, Game Plan, is back on air and you can interact with me and the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika every Monday evening.

THE HEROES ARE BACK IN TOWN . . . Captain Benjamin Moukandjou (ABOVE) proudly holds the Nations Cup trophy as he makes his way past an excited crowd on arrival back in Yaounde this week.

Sharuko on Saturday
A lot of you folks were probably deep in your sleep in the early hours of Monday morning, having been drained by the drama of a classic 2017 Nations Cup final as another epic football thriller unfolded in Houston, Texas, complete with a spectacular live performance from Lady Gaga.

Certainly not the type of football that you saw in Gabon, as the Indomitable Lions roared back to smash the defensive barriers erected by the Pharaohs, but football with an American touch, where catching the ball isn’t a foul, but is actually an art in scoring points, a game of touchdowns, field goals, quarterbacks and running backs.

Super Bowl 51, the glitzy showdown in Houston, was watched by a record 114,4 million people in the United States and produced a titanic contest, as the New England Patriots came back from the dead to beat the Atlanta Falcons.

Some have said this was written in the stars, proclaimed by fate in an American sporting season which has seen its fair share of fairy-tales.

The Chicago Cubs came back from 3-1 down to beat the Cleveland Indians 4-3 and win their first Major League Baseball World Series title in 108 years and the Cleveland Cavaliers stormed back from 3-1 down to beat the Golden State Warriors 4-3 and grab the NBA title.

How do we explain the recurrence of 3-1 in all the major sporting codes finals’ scores — the Cubs down 3-1 and eventually winning 4-3 in Major League Baseball; the Cavaliers down 3-1 and eventually winning 4-3 in the NBA and the Patriots scoring 31 (3-1) unanswered points on Monday morning as they rallied from 28-3 to win 34-28 in overtime?

I can probably hear some of you say, why is this fellow from Chakari keeps going on and on about this baseball, basketball, American football stuff on a blog we expect to read about the real football?

Uyu mwana waMai Dorcas, akakura achifunga kuti katimu kebhora kepa mine kainzi Falcon Gold ndiko kaigona bhora zvomene, akakura achifunga kuti hapana mumwe mutambi wenhabvu angakunde David Mwanza na Mutambarika Chirwa, avo vaive vatambi vakuru vechikwata che Falcon Gold, akawana nguva dai atikwanira, I can hear some of you saying.

Why bombard you with American football, when CAPS United unveiled a kit that probably is a mockery of their status as champions and the nation was subjected to a messy divorce between ZIFA and Warriors coach Callisto Pasuwa?

In the week a football-mad prophet, whose passion for the game knows no boundaries and makes him dream of creating the next biggest club in this country in the next 10 years, told us he is qualified, by heavenly anointment, to be the technical advisor of his Yadah Stars?

AMERICAN FOOTBALL, AMERICAN MOVIE AND ALL THE DRAMA

There is a reason Super Bowl 51 was more than just an American football game — a showcase for the greatest quarterback in the history of this game, a glowing advertisement of the virtues of never-say-die spirit, a throwback to that unforgettable afternoon when CAPS United refused to be buried by an avalanche triggered by their greatest rivals by scoring three times in the last five minutes to tie the game — to me this week.

It’s because, as the ugly divorce between Callisto Pasuwa and his employers at ZIFA gave us football’s version of the acrimony triggered by the spectacular fallout between Stunner, a guy whose music I have a lot of time for, and his estranged wife Olinda, a movie about an American college football team, ‘REMEMBER THE TITANS’, provided a reminder of how badly we have handled our post-Gabon experience.

The blockbuster movie, starring Denzel Washington, is based on a true story of how an American college football team from T.C. Williams High School helped smash the barriers of hatred, built along racial divisions, which plagued the residents of the United States city of Alexandria in Virginia in the early ‘70s.

Washington plays the role of Herman Boone, an African-American handed the tough job of becoming the first head coach of a predominantly white school in town, taking charge of a racially-divided team, in a racially-divided city, with his assistant being a white coach, Bill Yoast, played by Will Parton, whose star players are Gerry Bertier, a white student, and Julius Campbell, a black student.

“In Virginia, high school football is a way of life, it’s bigger than Christmas Day,” Sheryl Yoast, the firebrand little daughter of assistant coach Bill, says in one of the enduring quotes of the movie. “My daddy coached in Alexandria, he worked so hard my momma left him, but I stayed with coach, he needed me on that field.”

Somehow, against all the odds, the T.C. Williams High School football team, known as the ‘Titans’, find a way to work with each other, for each other, thanks to the spirited efforts of their head coach Boone, and the acceptance of his white assistant that he can work under him, and they then march on to a 13-game winning streak to win their first state championship.

The more the Titans succeeded, the more they shattered the racial barriers that had, for years, divided their city and by the time the team fought for the state championship, things had changed forever in Alexandria.

But, amid the success stories, there was tragedy.

Gerry, the star linebacker, is badly injured — just before the match for the state championship — when his car is hit by another vehicle, leaving him paralysed from the waist downwards.

Upon receiving the news, Julius rushes to hospital, where Gerry lies in intensive care unit, and when a white nurse tries to stop him from coming in, the injured star tells her, “He is my brother, don’t you see the family resemblance?” in a powerful message loaded with irony given Gerry is white and Julius is black.

Christian Bassogog, who was named the best player at the 2017 AFCON tournament, has sparked a lot of debate across the continent with some saying he doesn’t look like an average 21-year-old

Gerry is forced to watch from his hospital bed as his fellow Titans capture the state championship, in a stunning triumph for the power of race relations, but stalked by tragedy throughout his life, he dies 10 years later when his car is hit by a drunken driver.

His funeral, which is the final chapter of the movie, brings back his old Titans’ teammates and coaches and Sheryl Yoast, now 10 years older than the firebrand little daughter of the team’s white assistant coach, provides a moving closing chapter to this movie based on a true story.

“Ten years later, Gerry died and that’s what has brought us here. People say that it can’t work, black and white, well, here we make it work. WE HAVE OUR DISAGREEMENTS, OF COURSE, BUT BEFORE WE REACH FOR HATE, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, WE REMEMBER THE TITANS,” she says as the former players sing a farewell song for their departed teammate.

WHERE THE TITANS UNITED, THE WARRIORS ARE DIVIDING

As I reflected on the Titans, and how they used football, their form of football, to change and unite their city, I was left wondering why our nation has suddenly become so divided by a team, and game, whose heroics just a few months ago, united us into this one happy nation and helped us forget all the challenges we face as a country.

The Internet has been raging with hate, Twitter has been exploding with hate, Facebook has been bubbling with hate, Instagram has been tainted with hate, the text messages to the local newspaper columns have been pregnant with hate messages, the readers’ feedback columns have been spreading a lot of hate as our country staggers in the darkness inflicted by the Warriors’ failure in Gabon.

Where we were celebrating, just a few months ago, united by our team’s stunning success story, we are now deeply divided, where we basked in the national pride of being the only Southern African nation that had made it to Gabon, we now find ourselves cursing our identity because we believe we didn’t go as far as we expected.

Where Callisto Pasuwa was being toasted as a national hero, just eight months ago, for finally leading us back into the light of the AFCON finals, after a decade of staggering in the darkness of mediocrity, the coach finds himself being dismissed as a hopeless failure, the first gaffer to fail to win a Nations Cup finals game with the Warriors, with some even saying he is just a chancer who believes more in the mysterious powers of an apostolic sect than tactics and trends that define modern football.

Some have even gone back to singing their old song that Pasuwa didn’t select his men on merit, with the best player rewarded with a place in the team, amid a raging storm the coach was being influenced, according to those critics, by the need to play those — like the out-of-form Elisha Muroiwa — who could be given a platform to showcase his talent and, possibly, get a chance to play outside the country.

Where Khama Billiat was being hailed as probably the best thing to happen to our football, since Peter Ndlovu, after playing a starring role in helping the Warriors qualify for Gabon, winning the Champions League title, playing at the FIFA Club World Cup, being named the second best footballer plying his trade on the continent and among the best XI African footballers, he is now being dismissed as a fluke, who thrives on flattering to deceive.

Even my GamePlan colleague, Hope Chizuzu, tore into Khama on Monday night saying the Warriors’ forward wasn’t as good as we have made people to believe.

Where Costa Nhamoinesu was being hailed, just a few months ago, as the best defensive Warrior since Kaitano Tembo and Dumisani Mpofu, the gangly Sparta Prague defender is being dismissed as a lightweight, a fluke who deceived us against lightweight opponents like Malawi and Swaziland only for his shortcomings to be crudely exposed by the thoroughbred pedigree of the Lions of Teranga and Carthage Eagles of Tunisia.

Where Philip Chiyangwa was being hailed as the maverick the game needed, as its leader, to unlock its potential and lead us from the darkness, and was given a standing ovation by the crowd at the National Sports Stadium last June after the Warriors secured their place in Gabon, the businessman is now being dismissed, by his critics, some of whom have been waiting for a window to punch him below the belt, as a hopeless leader who should leave his post as ZIFA president.

And, amid the tsunami of hatred and divisions, we have watched as ZIFA and Pasuwa engage in a messy divorce.

Instead of building on the progress we have made, from being a nation that spent 10 years failing to qualify for the AFCON finals to coming close to beating Algeria in Gabon, and how best we can improve from our show there, we have resorted to our primitive ways of fighting each other, tearing each other apart and insulting each other.

If we really believe we are so terrible, so hopeless, a football nation trapped in the depths of despair, what then do you think our biggest rivals — Zambia and South Africa — who never made it to Gabon, defeated by Mauritania and Guinea-Bissau, are thinking about themselves right now?

Why are they not tearing themselves apart, why are they not finding their identity to be such a shame, why are they not insulting each other and why are they already planning to ensure they will make it to Cameroon 2019?

Why can’t we borrow a leaf from the Titans, from Sheryl Yoats, from the people of Alexandria, and show the world that even if “people say that it can’t work — Shona, Ndebele, Whites, Chewa, Ngoni, Tumbuka, Zulu, Tonga, Yao etc — well, here we make it work. WE HAVE OUR DISAGREEMENTS, OF COURSE, BUT BEFORE WE REACH FOR HATE, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, WE REMEMBER WE’RE THE WARRIORS.”

This world, isn’t as bad as we are making it appear.

And if you doubt that, take some time to watch the movie ‘The 33’, a true story of 33 miners who were trapped in a 121-year-old Chilean gold and copper miner in 2000, somehow, were all rescued alive and, in the tunnel that was their home for 69 days, 2000 metres underground, they left an inscribed message of hope that should unite us, “HERE LIVED 33 MINERS, GOD WAS WITH US.”

Of course, the Lord is with us, that’s why we were the only Southern African nation in Gabon and let’s derive pride from that and not this acrimony we are seeing.

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Come on Warriors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Khamaldinhoooooooooooooooo!

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A QUARTER-OF-A-CENTURY . . . This picture combo shows Robson Sharuko (left) as a fresh-faced young reporter, on arrival to begin his journalism journey at The Herald in November 1992, at the trophy presentation ceremony in 1995 when Dynamos pipped Blackpool to the league championship (middle) and after being presented with a birthday cake by his colleagues on Thursday after he turned 47 years, in the year he also marks 25 years of service at this newspaper

Sharuko On Saturday
TWO days ago, I turned 47, just three years short of a Golden Jubilee when, God willing, I will complete the magical mark of half-a-century of years in this beautiful garden of the living.

Of course, I’m no longer that fresh-faced boy who arrived in the big city — lonely, short on confidence and haunted by homesickness because I had left a big part of myself in my beloved hometown Chakari.

My weight has probably increased two-fold, I am now a giant of an individual and my life now plays out in the public arena.

Where I was a child, back in those days of my innocence, I’m now a proud father, seven months ago I lost one of my kids when my eternal sweetheart Mimizeni died and — for the first time in about two decades — she wasn’t around on Thursday to say, “happy birthday my beloved nigga.”

Cruel fate, somehow, conspired to ensure that the most beautiful flower of my life had to wilt, at the young age of 21, and her dark, grumpy, heavyweight Manchester United-supporting dad would live, as of now, more than double the years she spent on this planet.

Given this year is the Silver Jubilee, the 25th year of my lengthy romantic association with Zimbabwe Newspapers, the only company I have worked for all my life, it means I have spent more years at this firm than my sweetheart spent in this beautiful garden of the living.

Oh, by the way, my 47th birthday anniversary — three short of the magical Golden Jubilee — came in the week leading to the weekend when CAPS United will hold their homecoming show tomorrow to mark a return to the CAF Champions League, a confirmation of their return into the light after years of staggering in the darkness.

And, that means celebrating the greatness of the Green Machine and that brings back a flood of memories of Jubilee, Joel Shambo, also known as Mwalimu or The Headmaster, mazita kuita kupfekerana as the doyen of football commentators on Radio Zimbabwe, Choga Tichatonga Gavure, would always tell us, the ultimate sweetheart of the Makepekepe family, the golden boy they also lost along the way.

Just like Joe and Choga, I also could have been lost to this world, a number of times in my journey, notably when I needed the astonishing bravery of a friend’s brother, Juliano Banda, to rescue me from sinking in a raging river, as we took some swimming lessons as kids back in our days of innocence and adventure in Chakari.

Of course, I lived to tell the tale, not because I’m special, but simply because the Lord God decided I had more miles to clock in this garden of the living, more articles to write on this column, more time to devote to my family and watching my boy Kalusha grow has been a very special privilege and, of course, more years to watch my Red Devils and Warriors battle for glory.

And, long enough to be part of the witnesses to that drama of May 27, 2015 when a stunned football world woke up to the shock announcement by United States authorities that a 47-count indictment (check that number again) had been unsealed in a federal court in New York, charging 14 defendants with racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering which, would, signal the beginning of the end of Sepp Blatter’s broken, if not rotten, leadership of FIFA.

That morning, across the Atlantic, Swiss investigators raided the exclusive Hotel Baur-au-Lac in Zurich, Switzerland, and arrested seven high-profile FIFA executives, as they prepared to attend the 65th FIFA Congress, on accusations of having been involved in fraudulent activities running into more than $150 million.

FORTY SEVEN, THE NUMBER, THE MYSTERY AND THE THEORIES

I guess you know about the AK-47 and the P-47 fighter plane used in World War II and some academics believe the number 47 carries some mystical significance and this year marks the 47th year since the FIFA World Cup was first broadcast on television in the splendour of colour after 40 years of black-and-white images.

Some say it was a fitting tribute to the greatest collection of individuals to ever illuminate the World Cup, the finest cast of football thoroughbreds to ever grace the game’s biggest festival, the irresistible Brazilian team made up entirely of home-based superstars led by Pele, at his athletic best, Jairzinho, Carlos Alberto, Tostao, Rivellino and Gerson, which destroyed Italy 4-1 in the final in Mexico.

Four has also been a common number in the UEFA Champions League matches this week — mighty Barcelona being handed a four-goal mauling by PSG in Paris, Real Madrid and Napoli combining to score four goals in Madrid (Real 3, Napoli 1) and the difference in the goals scored in the game in Munich (Bayern 5, Arsenal 1) being four goals.

And, just like the unforgettable events at that ’70 World Cup in Mexico 47 years ago, the enduring performances of this week’s Champions League show were provided by South Americans with Argentine star Angel di Maria scoring two wonder goals in PSG’s humiliation of Barca and Thiago Alcantra, a Brazilian who plays for Spain, also scoring a brace in Bayern’s five-goal demolition of Arsenal.

Carlos Henrique Jose Franscisco Casimiro, the Brazilian midfielder who turns 24 next Friday and who is simply known as Casemiro, scored probably the pick of the Champions League goals this week, a stunning volley from distance that sealed Real Madrid’s 3-1 victory over Napoli on Wednesday night.

And Edison Cavani, an old-fashioned striker from Uruguay, also scored a wonder goal in Paris.

But, while the Champions League came back with a bang this week, with events on the field of play providing beautiful images that will be remembered for a long time, African football was being dominated by the ugliness of the politics of the boardroom as Issa Hayatou tried to flex his muscles and bully COSAFA boss Philip Chiyangwa in the first blow of what promises to be a vicious battle for the CAF presidency.

Hayatou is used to bullying football officials, it’s the way he has shaped his dynasty, his iron grip on African football for about 30 years, ensuring those who dare challenge him pay a big price for doing so, making sure those who don’t tow his line are ruthlessly punished so that they remain with scars that will always remind them who is the Indomitable Lion when it comes to the administration of the game on the continent.

Zimbabwe paid a huge price, for being part of a Southern and Eastern African revolt against Hayatou’s directive for every country on the continent to vote for Lennart Johannsen in the FIFA presidency in 1998, with the Cameroonian and his cartel reminding us who were the bosses by withdrawing our rights to host the 2000 Nations Cup finals on the flimsy excuse our preparations were running late.

And, almost 20 years later, we saw Hayatou and his cronies use the same formula to strip Madagascar of her rights to host the 2017 African Under-17 Championships, simply because the man who is challenging the Cameroonian is from that Indian Ocean island, an entire nation being punished simply because one of them has dared to exercise his right to challenge this monster.

South Africa hasn’t been forgiven, too, for that revolt against Hayatou in Paris in ’98, and the CAF leadership didn’t support the Rainbow Nation’s bid to host the World Cup finals in 2006 and in 2010 they even encouraged Morocco to bid for the 2010 tournament.

I was there in Abidjan, in ‘98, when Hayatou — watching from his VVIP seat — turned a blind eye on one of worst atrocities ever committed on the leader of a visiting football club, on the grand stage of the CAF Champions League, when Memory Mucherahowa was eliminated from the biggest battle of his career in a pre-match brutality choreographed by the hosting team in a sickening incident that defined the match.

And I have watched, over the years, as clubs from this region get a raw deal from referees, who appear to have been plucked from hell, whose bias is so blatant only a fool would suggest they aren’t acting on the instructions of the watching Big Brother who wants to further the interests of those who tow his line.

While the West and North Africans have virtually been given the exclusive rights to host the Nations Cup finals, with Gabon hosting two of the last three tournaments, the crumbs of the less glamorous tournament, CHAN, has been rotated among the Southern and Eastern African nations.

For years we have suffered in silence as if we are second-class citizens of the African football family but, as the spectacular Sepp Blatter downfall should have shown Hayatou just a few months ago, nothing lasts forever in this game and, now, the dynasty that the Cameroonian has built for about 30 years, is being shaken to the core.

And, rightly so!

The winds of change are sweeping across African football, the emperor has been undressed and, for the first time since he took over as the leader of the game on the continent, Hayatou and his camp have been shaken by a group of carefree administrators who have refused to be silenced by the monster’s threats and a culture of fear he has established over the continent.

AND THE BIBLE TELLS US, IN ISAIAH 47, OF THE FALL OF BABYLON

For a man whose biographer, Ayotunde Adelakun, described as “generally calm, always in control of situations, nothing seems to faze him, I always find him composed and he keeps a straight head in dealing with matters that confront him,” the way Hayatou reacted this week with threats to Chiyangwa suggests he is, for the first time, feeling the heat.

Of course, those fighting to topple him might not succeed next month but the mere bravery they have shown in taking him on have planted seeds of both rebellion, and resistance, which will bear a new crop of leaders who will challenge this football emperor and ask tough questions about his commercial links to Sportfive and other CAF partners.

Hayatou says his most memorable football tournament was the ’70 World Cup finals, which means that 47 years have passed since he witnessed his best show on a football field, and he has also picked former England ‘keeper, Gordon Banks, whose best moment in his career came 47 years ago at that World Cup when he made that stunning save from Pele, as his favourite goalminder of all-time.

The CAF president also says Pele, who reserved his best show, for his country, for his last appearance at the World Cup finals — with that brilliant show 47 years ago in Mexico — as his all-time favourite footballer.

I’m not sure of Hayatou’s spirituality and neither am I aware of the spiritual calling of those who have come out of the shadows to declare they will topple him but — those who believe this could be the end of an era for the Cameroonian — might get some inspiration from the Bible.

And, they might probably say it’s not just a coincidence that the Holy Book tells us in Isaiah 47 (his name is Issa and that number again), of the Fall of Babylon, then one of the largest and most powerful cities in the world.

The bible tells us, in Isaiah 13:17, “Look, I will stir up the Medes against Babylon. They cannot be TEMPTED BY SILVER OR BRIBED WITH GOLD,” and Babylon, the glory of the kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldeans’ pride, will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.

And, in Isaiah 47 (that number again) we are told, “therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from whence it riseth: and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know, the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it.”

When Isaiah wrote his prophecy, the Medes were a weak tribe, most of them were ruled by other nations and to imagine that they could have the capacity to capture, and destroy, a city as strong as Babylon was considered a joke but it’s something that came to pass.

And the bible tells us the incredible story of how David conquered Goliath and in 1 Samuel 46, David tells the giant Philistine, “this day the Lord will deliver you into my hands and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head, this day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel.”

And in 1 Samuel 47 (that number again), David says, “all those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD’s, and He will give all of you into our hands.”

Those who are battling to topple Hayatou, which looks like Mission Impossible right now, can probably draw inspiration from the holy word and how the number 47 dominates where dynasties were toppled.

Do you know that the name of Adam, the word leprosy and the verb “to stone” are used 47 times in the Bible and FOURTY SEVEN is the numerical value of the verse in Genesis where it is written, “and God saw that it was good.”

IN POPULAR CULTURE, THE NUMBER 47 IS ALSO SIGNIFICANT

The co-founder of American hip hop outfit, Pro Era, Jamal Dewar, affectionately known by his stage name Capital STEEZ, used to be fixated with the number 47 saying it represented a perfect expression of balance between the heart and the brain.

On December 23, 2012, he tweeted at 11:59 pm, saying “THE END,” and moments later he jumped off a Manhattan rooftop and plunged to his death.

The date of his death, 12/23/12, if added up (12 + 23 + 12) equals 47.

Break down the name ISSA (four letters) and HAYATOU (seven letters) and you get the number 47, break down the name PHIL (four letters) and PHILLIP (seven letters) and you also get the number 47 and don’t tell me that Robb (four letters) and Sharuko (seven letters) also gets you the number 47.

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pogbaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

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BUT EVEN IN THAT DARKNESS, THE MAGIC OF THIS ROONEY USED TO PROVIDE A SPARKLE OF DEFIANCE, THE RAINBOW OF PROMISE FOR A BETTER TOMORROW, THE COMFORT OF HOPE THAT THE MYSTERY OF TOMORROW WOULD NOT BE AS BLEAK AS THE MISERY OF YESTERDAY
FOR Rooney, their Green Ronnie and not our unwanted Red Wayne who has just turned down a multi-million dollar retirement adventure in China, the special bonding moment with his new family — who just two years ago represented the ultimate enemy — came shortly before the hour mark on Sunday.

A typically assured touch inside the area gave him control, a drop of the shoulder confused his marker, another touch pushed the ball into a little pocket of space on the outside and, even though his balance appeared to be failing him, his technique didn’t.

Then, a swing of that right foot, to produce the sweetest of connection, gave the ball the lift it required to beat a forest of desperate covering legs as it flew home to give his new franchise the lead on their homecoming show to the place where their Champions League adventure had started exactly 20 years ago.

And, as their Rooney — who turns 25 on June 10 — sped away in animated celebrations, struggling to remove a skin-tight jersey in that explosion of emotions, to be welcomed by the open arms and deafening cries of joy from his new family on Sunday, there was no mistaking that a special bond between the player and the fans had been created.

Football, what a beautiful game, where dreams can come true, where stars don’t necessarily have to come out of privileged backgrounds — but like this Rooney, their Green Ronnie — can be lifted from the slums of Epworth, and all the grinding poverty that stalks their neighbourhoods, to get a chance to also enjoy the good things that life provides.

Where celebrities don’t necessarily have to come from the posh neighbourhoods of our Little Hollywood and Little Beverly Hills, but can emerge from those who have suffered the pain of living tough lives can use their God-given ball skills to become heroes whose names carry their weight in gold they can, like the real Wayne Rooney, be adopted tens of thousands of miles away from England.

There was always a feeling there was something good about this Rooney since he exploded onto the scene in the colours of Monomotapa as a raw teenage talent, oozing with a lot of promise, a gem that just needed some polishing, a promising star who was crying out for a bigger stage and a better team than the modest Monoz.

And that stage was provided by the Glamour Boys, who pounced to secure his signature once a window for his availability was opened by that unfortunate collapse of Monoz, and there were some golden moments — like that late, late wonder winner against Shabanie Mine at Rufaro on September 28, 2014, which eventually proved decisive as Dynamos secured their fourth straight crown only just a point better than ZPC Kariba.

It was also Rooney’s first league championship crown.

And, there were also dark days, like that afternoon on May 3, 2015, when DeMbare were humiliated 0-3 by Chicken Inn in their Rufaro fortress, their worst home league defeat in 10 years, and while we didn’t know it back then, that shattering result marked the beginning of the end of their four-year dominance of the championship race as the pillars that had held them aloft started falling down.

But even in that darkness, the magic of this Rooney used to provide the defiant sparkle, the rainbow of promise for a better tomorrow, the comfort of belief that the mystery of tomorrow would not be as bleak as the misery of yesterday, the little oasis of hope in a desert of hopelessness, the refreshing island of life in the bleak raging ocean of salt water and lifelessness.

He even became a cult-hero they nicknamed him CR7, not the imperious Cristiano Ronaldo and his number seven brand that we gave him back in the days when he arrived at our Theatre of Dreams, but their ChitiyoRonald7 or ChitiyoRooney7, whichever suits you better.

In a frustrating age where there has been a considerable death of genuinely talented footballers on the domestic scene, when the production machine that gave us the likes of Stix, Jubilee, Bambo, King Peter, Chehuchi, Digital, Mawiiii, Rambo, Khatazile, Adamski, The Bomber, Chikwama, Yogi, TNT, Mastermind, Sinyo, Amayenge, to name, but a few, has suddenly lost its productive prowess, in terms of the quality it is supplying us, Rooney was quickly embraced as a star.

Of course, I doubt if he will ever be as good as any of the yesteryear fellows I have mentioned, but that is the way life is and let’s not mock those who are embracing him as their hero, as their star, because that is all they have and, in an era where Leonard Tsipa — at the ripe age of 35 — can feel he was robbed not to have won the Soccer Star of the Year award last season, who are we to suggest that Rooney isn’t worth the excitement his arrival at the Green Machine is generating?

After all, each era has its kind of stars and I have always argued that both Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi wouldn’t have won half the number of Ballon d’Or awards they have taken home if they had played in the era of Stanley Matthews, what a genius, Alfredo di Stefano, the immortal Ferenc Puskas, who scored 84 goals in 85 international matches for Hungary and 514 goals in 529 matches for Real Madrid and his national team, Raymond Kopa, Denis Law, Eusebio, Bobby Charlton, George Best, so brilliant Manchester United fans used to sing “MARADONA GOOD, PELE BETTER AND GEORGE BEST.”

FOR ROONEY, RODDIE AND DENNIE, IT’S A MAKE-OR-BREAK SEASON

My colleague at The Sunday Mail, Mako “Gold” Makomborero, whose knowledge of proper football can never be doubted given he is also a Red Devil, said it was the best performance by the green Rooney he has seen in three or four years and that means a lot.

Having seen him lose his way badly in that disastrous adventure at Harare City, where the absence of the chemistry that comes from an adoring army of fans saw him feel both lonely and confused, it was refreshing to see a glimpse of the Rooney that some of us were beginning to fear we had lost to the temptations of life.

And the one we feared we could never see again on the football field or, at least, playing as well as we hoped.

There are times when the purity of football takes over, and everything that has gone before it — the doubts inflicted by the brutality of a public examination suggesting you might not be really as good as they used to believe, the accusations of betrayal that you have a destructive allergy towards the virtues of loyalty, which made the likes of Ryan Giggs immortals, and the scary tabloid front page headlines of a soul that had lost its way – simply evaporate.

And, what takes over, is the enduring power and beauty of the game itself, the one who was an enemy yesterday being embraced as a hero today, the family that represented the ultimate enemy yesterday embracing you as their darling, their sweetheart, their hero, one of them, the past forgotten, washed away by the intensity of this blooming romance, and a flood of tears in the eyes of others.

I consider it a privilege to have been a witness to all this as it unfolded at the giant stadium on Sunday, as Rooney walked his way into the hearts of the CAPS United fans with that fine goal, which ultimately proved the difference between them waving goodbye to the Champions League, at the very first hurdle, and booking a high-stakes battle against TP Mazembe.

Certainly, one swallow doesn’t make a summer, and Rooney has set himself a high standard he needs to maintain, in this unforgiving game where you are as good as your last match, or your last championship as Claudio Ranieri will testify but, for a footballer who spent the whole of last year staggering in the darkness, it was refreshing to note he isn’t finished yet, as some had suggested, in a premature obituary to this remarkable talent. And, he isn’t the only one facing a defining season where it could be make-or-break.

The maverick Rodreck Mutuma, a self-styled Prince of local football when his goals, and not his occasional visit to a church, made newspaper headlines, is also seeking redemption after being dumped by the Glamour Boys, briefly resurfacing in Mozambique before becoming the first player since Stewart Murisa to belong to Dynamos, CAPS United and Highlanders in his career.

Denver Mukamba, who only five years ago was being toasted as the next big thing in domestic football after winning the Soccer Star of the Year award and, inevitably, being snatched by South African clubs before losing his way in the bright lights of Johannesburg to such an extent he was even considered excess baggage by Jomo Cosmos, also faces a make-or-break season this year to revive a career that has terribly stalled.

FOR THE TRIO, A REFLECTION TO THAT NIGHT IN EGYPT COULD POSSIBLY HELP

As Mukamba battles in the wilderness, desperate to convince a doubting army of critics that he still has to what it takes to be a genuine football star after his career slammed turbulence in South Africa and needing a defining season this year to show that his comical homecoming season last year wasn’t a true reflection of the rot that has crept into his game, it’s difficult to believe that just four years ago he was captaining the Warriors in a World Cup qualifier against the Pharaohs in Egypt.

Yes, as much as you might find this hard to believe today, Mukamba was installed Warriors captain at the relatively young age of 21, by coach Dieter-Klaus Pagels, and he was the team’s skipper in that 2014 World Cup qualifier at the Borg el-Arab Stadium in Egyptian on March 26, 2013 with the German gaffer going for a predominantly youthful Zimbabwe side.

Denver was the leader of a team that featured Knowledge Musona, who scored Zimbabwe’s goal in that 1-2 defeat in which the Pharaohs needing a last-gasp penalty from Mohamed Aboutrika to win the match, Khama Billiat, Ovidy Karuru, Silas Songani, Archford Gutu, Partson Jaure and Washington Arubi.

Pagels, who recommended Musona’s move to the German Bundesliga, had seen a lot of talent, leadership qualities and potential in Denver to give him the responsibility that comes with the massive role of captaining the Warriors in a World Cup qualifier, in Egypt of all places, and was rewarded with a fine performance by a young team unlucky to lose that match.

Mutuma played more than half an hour of that match, partnering Musona and Billiat in attack, after being introduced in the 58th minute and was on the field when the Warriors got their equaliser from the Smiling Assassin.

Chitiyo was an unused substitute in that game.

But while Musona, Gutu, Karuru and Songani have had a taste of European football, since then, and Khama has turned himself into an African champion, played at the FIFA Club World Cup, swept all the individual honours on board in South Africa, was voted into Africa’s All Star XI and, with the Smiling Assassin, inspired the Warriors back to the Nations Cup finals, Denver, Roddie and Rooney have seen their stars fade horribly and fallen down the pecking order when it comes to the senior national team.

And, it’s not just the quality of the company they had in that Warriors’ team which should trigger a painful soul-searching exercise for Dennie, Roddie and Ronney today but also the quality of the Egyptian players they battled against that night on March 26 on that Egypt’s Mediterranean resort city.

Mohamed Sallah played the full game for the Pharaohs and has since played for Chelsea and Italian giants Roma and was one of the stars of the 2017 Nations Cup finals in Gabon while Roddie and Rooney have been reduced to the crumbs of playing at the unfashionable CHAN finals, as was the case in Rwanda last year, where they barely made an impact.

In sharp contrast, Mohamed Elneny, who played the full 90 minutes in that game for the Pharaohs, has found his way into the big league of the English Premiership with Arsenal and starred at the 2017 Nations Cup finals while Denver was being forced to return home last year, from a disastrous Super Diski adventure, and failed to even make an impact on his return to the domestic scene.

Mohamed Nagy Gego, who played 79 minutes of that match for the Pharaohs, has been to Hull City while Ronnie, Denver and Roddie have been seeing the careers stagger backwards with each passing season, since then, provoking questions whether these guys were as good as they were made to believe.

Or we made them to believe.

But, all isn’t lost for them, to prove an army of doubters wrong and Rooney showed us on Sunday he can play at a reasonably good level again and it’s up to him to find the consistency his game is crying out for, to put in the workload needed to improve and the discipline needed to be successful.

Dennie, in my little book still probably the most naturally-gifted footballer of the trio, is now playing for a coach who unleashed his talent on the big stage, who believes in him to such an extent he even went to the footballer’s family this week to plead with them to help him rebuild this player’s shattered confidence, who off-loaded everyone to ensure he builds a team around him and who says he can get the best out of him again, and he can’t blame anyone if he fails.

Roddie, always the maverick, has a tougher battle to convince Bosso fans the gamble their team took on him was worth it but if there is a character, certainly short on talent but long on ambition who can explode if he cuts the excessive baggage of negativity that usually stalks him, then this is the man, with his boot as a makeshift phone, calling home to tell us he has scored.

He has even turned to God and in the Lord there is salvation.

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pogbaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

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Chat with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber or read my material in The Southern Times or on www.sportszone.co.zw. The authoritative ZBC weekly television football magazine programme, Game Plan, is back on air and you can interact with me and the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika every Monday evening.

LIKE BIRDS OF THE SAME FEATHER, PASUWA AND RANIERI HAVE BEEN FLOCKING TOGETHERFOR me, the English summer of 2003 proved quite special, one of the reasons for this being that I finally met my idol, legendary sportswriter and commentator Christopher Martin-Jenkins, a thoroughbred sports journalist widely acknowledged as one of the finest of all-time. Simply known as CMJ by his colleagues, he was the journalist whose work had played a massive part in planting the seeds of attraction, which would eventually seduce me into the trenches of this profession and ignite my endless love affair with this profession.

Ten years later, he would be dead, gone at the age of 67, after losing his battle against cancer.

But, there was more to that tour of duty, which made it unforgettable than just meeting an idol I would lose 10 years down the line and the beauty of covering Test cricket tours is that you always have plenty of time to sample the sights and sounds of your host country.

And England, in the summer of 2003, provided a lot for that unlike on my previous visits for the Commonwealth Games in Manchester in 2002 or with Blackpool in ’95.

The Zimbabwean community in England had grown substantially and, after work, I used to take the train ride to various places and developed a particular liking to Leicester, a city where Murape Murape had now pitched his residence as part of a significant population of people from home who now stayed there.

They even had a pub, in the centre of town, which they called “Machembere” and it used to be my first port of call, if I wanted to see a group of my fellow Zimbabweans hanging out at night in Leicester back then, having a drink or two and regularly taking nostalgic journeys to the real home sweet home thousands of kilometres away.

For the natives of Leicester, the summer of 2003 was also very special.

I arrived in their town to witness a city having a massive party, celebrating their beloved football club’s stunning journey from tragedy into triumph, from slipping into the chaos and possible destruction that came with administration, after sinking into a pool of debt in excess of $46,4 million, before a rescue package saved it from imminent collapse.

And, just eight months after being rescued from possible ruin in October 2002, Leicester City sensationally secured a ticket into the Premiership in May 2003, after finishing second in the old Division One championship race to Portsmouth, and I arrived in the City of the Foxes to find a town celebrating their football team’s miraculous story.

Since then, charmed by those beautiful and unforgettable moments I shared with the residents of Leicester in the summer of 2003, the Foxes have retained a special place in my heart.

For some, among Leicester town’s new generation of residents like Murape Murape, the Foxes’ blue-and-white home colours provided a connection to a club they had left back home, the DeMbare of their dreams, and that they found a reason to support Leicester City was as predictable as it was sentimental.

And last year, we watched in amazement as a club that was almost ruined by financial challenges in 2002 rose to become English Premiership champions.

That this miracle was masterminded by a then 64-year-old coach who, in 30 years of coaching some of the world’s most powerful football clubs — Napoli, Fiorentina, Atletico Madrid, Chelsea, Juventus, Roma, Inter Milan and Monaco, had failed to win a top-flight league title, dismissed by his critics as a man who was past his sell-by-date, made Leicester City’s success even more remarkable.

A JOB WHERE YOU LIVE

AND DIE BY YOUR RESULTS

So popular was Ranieri that his lookalike, an unemployed Scottish electrician from Glasgow made the trip to Leicester and took advantage of the Italian’s popularity, in the madness of the celebrations triggered by the team’s success, to sleep with 26 women in the town who believed they were dating the coach.

Ranieri didn’t only turn himself into the King of Leicester, but he also won various awards, notably the English Premier League Manager of the Season, World Soccer Magazine Manager of the Year, English Premiership’s League Managers Association Manager of the Year, the BBC Sports’ Coach of the Year, ESPN Coach of the Year and FIFA’s Coach of the Year.

But, just nine months after celebrating his finest hour, with his team’s triumph attracting a quarter-of-a-million people onto the streets of Leicester to watch their open-top bus parade, Raineri was gone.

Fired by the owners of the Foxes as the club flirted with relegation.

Jose Mourinho leapt to the defence of Ranieri, which was probably expected given the Portuguese gaffer was also fired just months after leading Chelsea to a league championship.

But, for Ranieri to believe he would always be protected by the championship he won, for a modest club and the awards he collected after that, was certainly as foolish as it was flawed in the brutal reality of what football has become today and in a Premiership where relegation has serious financial implications.

Just being in the Premiership next season guarantees the Foxes more than £100 million in revenue from the TV deal, a further £10 million at every home Match Day in earnings, which is far more than the £100 million they won for being champions, while a drop into the Championship would see them getting just £3 million, from TV money.

And, for club which just 14 years ago flirted with financial ruin, this was just unacceptable.

Something had to give and, in this case, Ranieri paid the price.

If we are to credit the Foxes’ incredible success to Raneiri, which is fair because he was the coach who picked the team and made all the calls, then we should also be able to credit the team’s stunning fall from champions into relegation trouble to the same coach because that is the way this game works.

If we give him credit for introducing N’Golo Kante, which he deserves, why then should we also not fault him for not finding another Kante, or anyone close to the Frenchman, with the player he signed as a replacement failing badly to make an impression he has virtually been phased out of the team? Would we be wrong to suggest Kante’s influence, and not Ranieri’s tactical brilliance, was probably the difference between winning and losing the title?

It’s the coach’s job to nurse and manage the egos of his players, many of which became inflated because of the success, and here the Italian was a colossal failure because it’s something he hasn’t handled before and once opponents found a way to deal with his one-dimensional approach of counter-attacking football, and thereby neutralising Jamie Vardy’s threat, Ranieri’s shortcomings were brutally exposed.

When, like Ranieri, you are feted like a king by being named FIFA Coach of the Year, you would have set certain standards and you can’t let those levels drop, just months after scaling those heights, and as much as football was fair to reward the Italian for his success last year, the game was also fair to condemn him for his failure to maintain those lofty levels.

He raised the expectations of the people of Leicester, made them live their dream and believe they could no longer be considered as just another average community with an under-achieving football club and, for that he should be saluted and — as someone who knows that town well — I can understand the impact this had on the city.

But when the standards plummeted so rapidly and they are soon turned into a punching bag, under the watch of the same coach, then the gaffer also has to bear responsibility because his only responsibility can’t only be measured when times are good and then he escapes scrutiny when times are horrible.

George Graham — who won six trophies with Arsenal, including the championship, back in the days when the Gunners were a proper heavyweight football club that didn’t spend a dozen years without being champions and still celebrate such mediocrity as a queer model of success — provided a refreshing analysis that was a departure from the usual glowing words of comfort provided by coaches when one of them loses a job.

“If he was a CEO in charge of a company that made £5 billion one year but just about broke even the next, he would be sacked. There isn’t too much difference,” Graham told The Daily Mirror of England.

CLAUDIO AND CALLISTO, WHAT A STRIKING TALE OF TRIUMPH AND DIVORCE

Ranieri’s finest hour came in the same year that Callisto Pasuwa also celebrated his greatest achievement by guiding the Warriors to the Nations Cup finals after 10 years of repeated failure which had traumatised a nation that has always loved its football team despite its frustrating habit of disappointing them on regular basis.

Where a German and Brazilian gaffer, and two of the most highly-rated local coaches, had failed as the Warriors staggered in the gloom of failure in exactly a decade, Pasuwa changed the script and ended that nightmare, at the first time of taking charge of the team, by masterminding his men’s return to a dance with African football’s aristocracy.

To many of those who believed in him, Pasuwa was the very clone of Sunday Chidzambwa — the most successful Zimbabwean coach in history — the one they had been waiting for all along, and his achievements with winning four straight league championships with Dynamos, which provided a throwback to an era when the Glamour Boys ruled the domestic football scene, provided them with a reason to believe in him as their Messiah.

And he backed their belief in him with results, very, very big results, eliminating Cameroon by holding them in their backyard as he took his country back to the African Games for the first time in 20 years, qualifying for the CHAN finals and, more importantly, dominating his 2017 Nations Cup qualifying group which his men won with a three-point cushion to become the first troops of Warriors to top their AFCON qualifying group in 36 years.

That he could achieve all that despite going for months without being paid, as he served his nation, without the aid of what his opponents took for granted, like regular friendly internationals, and leading a volatile battalion whose focus was regularly affected by revolt by players demanding their unpaid dues, made Pasuwa’s achievements very, very special.

And, more importantly, he was just like the guy next door, a laid-down character who didn’t court any controversy, who was comfortable with seeing his face on the back pages of newspapers and who didn’t consider himself a celebrity but just a servant for his people, just another guy from Chitungwiza who was fighting for the cause of his country and who delivered, despite all the challenges he faced, made him such a loveable character.

He was also deeply religious, a devoted family man who believed in God, and in a country that treasures those who love the Lord, Pasuwa was the coach sent from heaven to deliver his nation to the green Canaan fields of success, our football Moses who would pluck us from the slavery of failure and deliver us to the Promised Land.

What a humble guy, the one you always wished to see succeeding.

But, just like Ranieri, he wasn’t faultless, because no one is, and while some of his worst critics are lucky that their shortcomings don’t play out in the public gallery, that they don’t get the regular tests he faced in his tough job, for they will never be given a national assignment where their fault-lines can be dissected by an entire nation, Pasuwa never shied away from responsibility and considered it a privilege.

And, as far as I’m concerned, Pasuwa was a huge success with the Warriors and, while I respect those who feel otherwise, I feel some of the abuse he has taken has been very, very unfair and can only come from shameless critics who live in a reality world that would make the Khadasians green with envy and probably should consider rehearsing for Big Brother Africa, where everything is smooth-flowing, the next time the show comes along.

But, having said that Pasuwa, on reflection, should also acknowledge — for the sake of the future of a career that still promises a lot for him — that he was badly exposed in Gabon, he still has a lot to learn for him to realise his potential and believing the lie of those who tell him he is the best thing that ever happened to football coaching, will not help him develop into the coach that he can become.

He also needs to choose his backroom staff wisely, investing in people who can help him when the going gets tough and his coaching abilities have been tested to the limit, as was the case in Gabon, rather than settle on lightweight assistants because he want those who cannot threaten his job, who can possibly replace him, because the glory will always be his.

He also needs to concede that the game has turned scientific, where reading the strengths and weaknesses of your opponents is as important as selecting the best XI who will fight your battles and — on reflection — he would have done a better job in Gabon if he had listened to George Mbwando’s advice rather than retreat into a shell, camouflaged by the lies of those who told him he couldn’t learn anything from a man who doesn’t know what it means to coach Dynamos, let alone win four straight league titles with the Glamour Boys.

Those who said where was George Mbwando when Pasuwa, with his two-in-one blanket, was taking that long and dangerous road trip to Blantyre with his troops for a Nations Cup qualifier they won after just arriving hours before the contest against Malawi.

Callisto reminds me a lot about Claudio, two coaches who did incredibly well but could only go so far and, when push came to shove, they were both exposed badly — the Italian being undermined by the loss of just one influential player and the Zimbabwean being undermined by a stubborn refusal to concede that the AFCON finals, unlike playing Malawi and Swaziland, would be a different ball game, a different level altogether.

And having Saul Chaminuka as his trusted lieutenant, his go-to-guy when the going got tough, was as much a huge mistake as some of his election options like investing his trust in a player for a central defensive role whose confidence was at its lowest ebb after a season crippled by injuries.

But, he will always be a coach I respect because, after all my idol CMJ told me ,back in those days to always, always judge people you write about fairly.

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Come on Warriors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Khamaldinhoooo0oooooooooooo!

Text Feedback – 07192545199 (I migrated to OneFusion)

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Chat with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber or read my material in The Southern Times or on www.sportszone.co.zw. The authoritative ZBC weekly television football magazine programme, Game Plan, is back on air and you can interact with me and the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika every Monday evening.

WHAT A CRAZY WORLD . . . Kaizer Chiefs and Mamelodi Sundowns’ fans have been using Barcelona’s six-goal thrashing of PSG to remind Orlando Pirates fans of their team’s six-goal mauling at the hands of SuperSport United and the Brazilians this season

Sharuko on Saturday
DONALD TRUMP has built a political career, which has taken him all the way to the White House, on a foundation in which he, among other things, finds it very fashionable to describe American political journalists as a bunch of very dishonest people.

The maverick billionaire constantly attacks the New York Times, as a failing newspaper, regularly blasts CNN and at times refuses to take questions from their journalists and also slams other American networks like ABC, CBS and NBCNews as media organisations representative of what he claims is a cancer of dishonesty.

It’s a new era for these guys, they have never confronted someone like Trump who, when he feels he has been offended by them rushes to the comfort of his Twitter feed to hit back at them, with astonishing regularity, labelling them monsters past their sell-by-date.

“The Fake News media failing @newyorktimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN is not my enemy,” he tweeted recently. “It is the enemy of the American people.”

Of course, this isn’t restricted to the minefields of the American political world.

Even in our green fields of sport, things sometimes come to a head and Sir Alex Ferguson, the most successful British football coach of all-time, had a number of running battles with the media in his country, banning the BBC from interviewing him for seven years after describing the corporation as “arrogant beyond belief”.

It took the intervention of the then BBC director general, Mark Thompson, who personally travelled to Manchester in 2012 to speak to Fergie for the feud — triggered by a 2004 BBC documentary, “Father and Son”, which insinuated that Ferguson’s son Jason, then a football agent, was involved in some questionable dealings — to end.

But all that pales in comparison to Ferguson’s outburst, on May 7, 2002, when the Scot — annoyed by the British media’s persistent claims that midfielder Juan Sebastian Veron, whom he had signed at a huge fee, would not make it in the English Premiership — ordered the journalists out of Manchester United’s training ground, in the process yelling, “He (Veron) is a f****n great player and you’re all f*****n idiots.”

I have had my running battles, over the years, with footballers, coaches and administrators unhappy with what they perceived to be the negativity of my coverage of them, including being threatened with deportation from Ghana in ’97, after the authorities there exploded with rage following a report I filed related to a poor training ground offered to the Warriors on a ’98 Nations Cup qualification tour of duty.

And, only two years ago, the conservative media in Australia, led by Fox Sports and a number of influential newspapers, unsuccessfully campaigned to call for the cancellation of my ICC World Cup accreditation and subsequent deportation from Australia and New Zealand because they had been angered by a report I had filed for this newspaper.

A BARCA TRIUMPH THAT SHOULD PROVOKE A GLOBAL MEDIA INTROSPECTION

Wednesday night’s Miracle of Barcelona, when the Catalan giants overturned a 0-4 first leg Champions League deficit to score three times, in the last seven minutes, and power to a 6-1 victory over French giants Paris St-Germain has been hailed by newspapers around the world as a master class.

Of course, it was.

A refreshing feel-good story, which had a happy ending, about a club that refused to be buried under the weight of daunting odds, which dared climb heights never before scaled by mere mortals, which made a mockery of history and in one-and-a-half hours of a display of steely determination, overturned a 0-4 first leg deficit to power into the quarter-finals of the Champions League.

That it had never been done before, that the experts said it could never be done, made Barcelona’s story special and that the Catalan giants needed the last touch of the match, to win the game, provided a fitting ending to a night when you didn’t need to be a Barcelona fan to appreciate the majesty and beauty of their incredible shift.

I have never been a Barca fan, the fact that this club reached probably the peak of its powers at a time when my beloved Manchester United was on the threshold of ruling the world and, twice, beat us in the Champions League final, only helped to isolate this club further away from my radar of affection.

But that doesn’t blind me to the reality that they play beautiful football, the way the game should be played, and they have also been lucky, of course, to have the service of a genius called Lionel Messi who has, now and again, provided the difference in this club’s endless quest for greatness.

And, as much as I felt for poor PSG and the French people after their club’s meltdown in Barcelona, triggered by an inspired opponent and some questionable, if not sickening match officiating in which their genuine call for a penalty was turned down — when Angel di Maria was fouled in the box — while their opponents received two controversial spot-kicks, including a blatant drive by Suarez — I also cheered Barca’s remarkable spirit and never-say-die attitude.

The world football media hailed the Miracle of Barcelona, telling us why this club is very, very special, justifying why they believe it is the best football team in the world, why it has always represented the purity of football and why it is different from any club in the world.

Brazilian superstar Neymar, who until the last seven minutes was having a horror performance, was now being saluted as a genius, thanks to the way he helped Barca turn things around, scoring a superb free-kick to spark the comeback, converting a penalty and then providing the assist for the decisive killer goal.

Suddenly, there were front page images of celebrating Barca players, all over the world, accompanied by articles saluting them as heroes.

But, shouldn’t the wave of all these articles we have seen around the world this week, saluting Barcelona as this mean machine that represents greatness, football purity, the epitome of the beauty in this game, the ultimate juggernaut, a club that represents all the virtues of the never-say-die spirit that this game badly wants, provoke a soul-searching exercise within the same media that has gone into overdrive hailing the events of the Camp Nou on Wednesday night?

Doesn’t the stunning flip-flopping that we have seen from the world media, which only three weeks ago was performing the last rites on the graveyard of this Barca team, telling us that this was the painful end of an era after the club’s 0-4 humbling in Paris, flooding us with a glut of eulogies as they mourned the death of this football franchise, paint a picture of confusion and ask serious questions about this profession we all love?

Isn’t the world media pushing itself towards irrelevance when, this week, it all unites to tell its readers and consumers that Barcelona, as we used to know it during the days of Xavi and Pep Guardiola, is dead and buried, in the wake of that pounding in Paris and, three weeks later, the same media reinvents itself as converts saluting the same Barca as the best football club in the world simply because it has defied its predictions of doom and turned things around?

Isn’t this the height of hypocrisy by men and women who, as in the Barca case, are easily seduced into rushing to premature conclusions, when their readership expect them to provide guidance, leadership and in-depth analysis, who flow with the tide and simply go where the wind blows and, when things suddenly change, as was the case on Wednesday night, don’t dare to offer any apology to their readers and, like a chameleon, simply change their colours and begin singing a different tune altogether?

Why should it always be sunny, in their world, that today they can tell the whole world that Barca is a club that is disintegrating, in a spectacular free-fall, on the basis of a pounding at the hands of PSG in Paris and then — after just three weeks — convert themselves into preachers, on basically the same subject, telling the same subject, telling the same readership that Barca are the greatest thing that ever happened to football simply because the Catalans have overturned the deficit?

When the should the people who are supposed to provide leadership, in terms of analysis of events, the experts who shouldn’t be lured by just a mere scoreline or whose conclusion shouldn’t be driven only by history, simply because it hadn’t been done before, fail in their primary duty to provide such leadership, isn’t there a danger that they lose relevance in the eyes of their readership?

Of course, I don’t believe Fergie’s assessment, in his moment of both weakness and fury, that they are “all f****n idiots,” but I think, after the events of the past three weeks, there are some people who have lost confidence in a number of people they relied upon for expert analysis and direction when it comes to football.

And that sports journalism, around the world, is on trial in the wakes of the prophets of doom who led the world to believe it was impossible for Barca to overturn that deficit, who told their readers that this was the beginning of the end of the golden era of the Catalan giants, only for them to change tune on Wednesday, praising the same team as the greatest football club in the world, is something that we have to accept.

A REMINDER OF WHAT THEY

SAID NOT SO LONG AGO

Diario AS is a very influential Spanish daily sports newspaper which concentrates, largely, on football and has a circulation of about 214 654 which has been rising all the time.

Just two months ago, after Barcelona lost 1-2 in the first leg of a Copa del Rey match against a nine-man Athletic Bilbao, the newspaper’s online English site ran an article, in which it captured the reaction of the world media to the result, under the headline: WORLD PRESS REACT — Barca are no longer the best team in Spain.’

“Teams like Bilbao now look at the Catalans and see vulnerabilities, chinks in the armour, where they once just saw a fearsome killing machine that chopped down everyone in their wake,” the Daily Mirror of England wrote.

A number of other newspapers, from around the world, also joined in the feast as they savaged Barca as a spent force that was disintegrating at an alarming rate.

And, after the Massacre In Paris, the world media amplified their attack on the Catalan giants, using that beating as further evidence that their empire had crumbled.

“The inquest into Barcelona’s 4-0 defeat in Paris agreed on one thing — this was not a team losing a football match so much as a club losing its way,” said Diario Sport under the headline, ‘THIS IS NOT BARCA,’ with the newspaper saying the “coach had signed his own death warrant with a performance completely devoid of any trace of Barcelona’s philosophy. That warrant will not be served until the end of the season but save for a miraculous turnaround in the second leg — which no one believes in — it will most definitely be served.

“A team built on the extraordinary talents of its front three and (as the coach’s critics would have it) little else, will be horribly exposed if those three don’t perform. It did not help Enrique’s cause that he was so out-thought by fellow Spanish coach Unai Emery who until Tuesday night had a terrible record against Barcelona with only one win in 23 attempts at various clubs.”

Crucially, the newspaper said Barca’s thrashing in Paris carried “the stink of the end of an era and the empty weeks that take them through to the end of the season — at least during Champions League fixtures — will need to be filled with something, and what better than the announcement of a bumper new contract for the club’s greatest ever player.”

At least, not everyone saw the gloom and I owe my boss, Caesar Zvayi, a Glenfiddich 18 reserve whisky after I questioned his confidence to go Twitter, just before the match on Wednesday, to boldly declare that Barcelona would overturn the four-goal deficit and qualify for the quarter-finals of the Champions League.

I owe you one Prophet Caesar!

But what about the Barca coach, Luis Enrique, who correctly called before the match, that his men would score six goals with the sixth goal coming in the 95th minute?

“If a team can score four against us then we can score six against them. The result in the first leg was very clear but this is a knockout tie and we’re only at half-time. Over 95 minutes, an infinite number of things can happen,” he told a media conference before the big game.

And, lo and behold, his men scored six goals with the last one coming in the 95th minute.

Amid all this drama, my award for honesty goes to Barca defender Javier Mascherano for telling the media, after the match on Wednesday, that he had fouled Di Maria for that penalty that was not given.

“I made contact with Di María. It’s obvious it was a foul. I’m not going to lie about it.”

But, for all its challenges, sports writing can still provide a rainbow in the gloom and British journalist Sid Lowe, writing in The Guardian this week, did just that with this classic paragraph, “Even the goal, Barcelona’s fourth, should have been an afterthought. Neymar’s free-kick felt almost as cruel as it was perfect, curling into the top corner by the near post, a moment that would ultimately prove meaningless, a brief and empty hope inevitably taken away. The crazy thing was that somehow there was substance.”

And, on such occasions, I retreat to the world of my idol, the late Christopher Martin-Jenkins, who had a habit of always being late, which became the focus of his friend Mike Selvey, a reporter for The Guardian newspaper, in a moving opening paragraph to the obituary he penned for his departed colleague under the headline “Cricket loses the best friend it ever had.”

“The late Christopher Martin-Jenkins — we always said it had a pertinent ring to it, because generally that is what he was. And, now, he really is,” wrote Shelvey.

Now, that’s a classic.

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pogbaaaaaaaaaaa!

Text Feedback – 07192545199 (I migrated to OneFusion)

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Email – robsharuko@gmail.com

Skype – sharuko58

Chat with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber or read my material in The Southern Times or on www.sportszone.co.zw. The authoritative ZBC weekly television football magazine programme, Game Plan, is back on air and you can interact with me and the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika and producer Tich “Chief” Mushangwe every Monday evening.

Sharuko on Saturday
IT might have taken us about two decades, but like true Warriors, we never lost hope and bided our time knowing that one fine day we would inflict revenge and embarrass a football emperor just when he was pleading for a retirement package wrapped in both decency and glittering golden ribbons.

It could have taken us close to 20 years, but when we finally hit back, for the pain and embarrassment we have carried as a nation since the turn of the millennium, it triggered a tsunami that swept away a dinosaur which believed it was the be-all-and-end-all of our football jungles.

It might have taken us a generation, but when we finally fired back, after years of being taken as hopeless cowards of the county not brave enough to even frighten, let alone harm a church mouse, we chose the biggest stage to stage a brazen coup that toppled an empire built over a quarter-of-century.

It could have taken us what looked like an eternity, but when we finally fought back, and launched our spectacular counter-attack against a Goliath that had trampled upon our freedoms with sickening disdain, the ferocity of our punches were felt around the world and downed an Indomitable Lion they said would never fall.

And, that we chose the spiritual home of Africa — the very Ethiopian city where our political fathers first met on May 1963, to form the Organisation of African Union before returning on May 26, 2001 to establish the African Union — to deliver our knockout blow could not have more appropriate.

Some have said it’s the biggest knockout punch ever delivered on African soil since a resilient Muhammad Ali weathered a seven-round pounding from the beast that was George Foreman and then, in the eighth round, somehow found a way to send the then undefeated world champion crashing onto the canvas in the Rumble in the Jungle in Kinshasa in 1974.

Others have equated it to those two unforgettable days in African football when our continental representatives punched above their weight to shock the globe with Cameroon defeating defending World Champions Argentina at Italia ’90 and Senegal beating World and European champions France at the 2002 World Cup finals.

Either way, it felt very good.

And that Cyclone Ahmad, which developed as a mere tropical storm off the coast of Madagascar on the Indian Ocean before turning into a hurricane, after it gained a lot of strength in Harare after sucking in the boundless electric energy of Captain Fiasco en-route to causing extensive destruction in the boardrooms of African football power in Addis Ababa on Thursday, originated on our shores, made it even more satisfying.

The English say those who laugh last always laugh the longest.

And, finally, having the privilege to watch an emperor without the clothes that used to fool him he was the greatest thing ever to happen to African football, without the power he used to wield indiscriminately and the authority he used to abuse with reckless abandon to further his interests, without the aura of invincibility he used to cast over our continent, reduced to just an ordinary man, just like you and me, was a spectacle to behold.

It was easy, in his hour of a shattering defeat, to feel sorry for him — betrayed by those hangers-on who had transformed him into this monster who believed nothing could shake him, being consumed by that sinking feeling of failure he never believed would ever be part of his indomitable soul and being devoured by the emotions of an implosion he never imagined would be part of the story of a life he has led as the untouchable football emperor.

After all, he had somehow survived the earthquake that shattered the dynasty of Sepp Blatter and destroyed the public career of Michel Platini, even being promoted to the long-cherished role of being the acting boss of world football, a dream he had pursued with vigour since the first day he became the leader of the game in Africa, casting himself as the one island endowed with virtues of morality in an ocean corrupted by the vices of immorality.

Andrew Jennings, the investigative British journalist who has dedicated his life to bringing down FIFA’s web of corruption, and whose work formed the basis on which Blatter was dethroned, tried to shake Hayatou in November 2010 when, in a Panorama programme on BBC, he claimed the Cameroonian had taken bribes in the sale of television rights for the FIFA World Cup.

The Sunday Times of Britain also tried to shake him by publishing claims from a whistle-blower that he had, along with a fellow CAF executive member, accepted $1,5 million from Qatar to support the Gulf state in its successful bid to host the 2022 World Cup.

But Hayatou survived all those storms, one way or the other, while others around him were being swept away by the tide, and when he was the last man standing, promoted to be the FIFA acting president on October 8, 2015, in the wake of Blatter’s spectacular fall from grace, he really believed the coast had been cleared for him to live his dream.

Everything else, including his shameless treatment of us as second-class citizens in an African football family that was a new millennium football version of Animal Farm, where all Africans were equal, but some Africans were more equal than others, a sporting version of apartheid where the west of the continent represented purity and we represented garbage, didn’t matter now.

He was untouchable, the anointed one, and his hangers-on told us, repeatedly, touch not the anointed one.

That is, until, Cycle Ahmad struck on Thursday.

YOU DON’T MESS WITH US

AND GET AWAY WITH IT

There is something about us, as Zimbabweans, that is simply unique — the most educated people Africa has ever seen, and will ever see, the most resilient nation that the world has ever seen, or will ever see, a people who have lived under the yoke of sanctions, but refuse to fall, a nation that was driven to the gates of hell by the worst hyper-inflation to hit a country since Nazi Germany during World War II, but still found a way back to earth.

A nation whose last rites have been read, again and again, whose scripts of eulogies have been written, again and again, but stubbornly refuses to die with the scavengers, which have been circling above us hoping to feast on our carcass when we eventually go to the ground, when the breathing stops and their party begins, ending up as the ones who have lost their numbers as they succumb to death before us.

A country of about just 15 million people that can provide the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) with a visiting research fellow (jet propulsion lab) in Arthur Mutambara, the world’s third largest mining company, Lonmin, with its chief executive in Ben Magara, Emirates with its black African captain of the double-decker Airbus A380, the biggest and most sophisticated passenger plane in service in the world today in Captain Matambanadzo Chakorera.

A small landlocked African nation on the southern tip of the world which is blessed by the Lord to ensure that, when those who created the game of cricket, the English, wanted a coach to help them end 18 years of the ultimate pain inflicted by their biggest rivals in the Ashes showdown, it had to be a Zimbabwean, Duncan Fletcher, who would engineer that triumph over Australia in September 2005.

Show me a smaller African nation that has given the world a number one in golf, with three Majors to his credit, a European Cup winner in football, a serial winner of the English league championship, a world number one diver, a leading world number one swimmer and a mobile telecommunications entrepreneur and has the best climate in the world you can play cricket in winter, then I will start a campaign for Hayatou to come back as CAF president.

And, when the Cameroonian strongman picked up a fight with us by taking away our rights to host the 2000 Nations Cup finals, by turning a blind eye at the Stade Felix Houphouet-Boigny in 1998, when Dynamos skipper Memory Mucherahowa was being butted into unconsciousness by that Ivorian mob so that he couldn’t play in his club’s biggest match; and by not being there for us, as the senior FIFA vice-president, when we were expelled from the 2018 World Cup qualifiers on flimsy grounds, he probably under-estimated our capacity to fight back.

He probably made the fatal mistake of looking at the size of the dog in the fight, as his measurement to bully us, rather than the size of the fight in the dog.

And, on Thursday, in Addis Ababa, we made Hayatou pay for the sins of his years of treating us as his slaves as that movement, which started here in Harare, swept him away in a blaze of humiliation from a position he believed was his for life, from a role he believed he was anointed to have, from a job he badly loved.

Every vote that helped sweep him away from the geography of African football, into its history books, had a tag which read “Made in Harare”, and every blow he suffered on Thursday afternoon was our little but decisive revenge for the suffering that Memory endured that day in Abidjan, for the way DeMbare were not given a playing field that wasn’t level in the biggest match of their history that afternoon in Cote dÍvoire, for the way Highlanders were conned by that Cameroonian club, Sable de Batie, who — using hook and crook — were allowed to overturn a 0-3 first leg deficit from Bulawayo in the Champions League in 2000.

For the way the Mighty Warriors were conned of a goal that could have changed their campaign last year, while Hayatou ignored it all, for Khama Billiat — who was robbed of his prize as the best footballer based in Africa because of Hayatou’s machinations, for CAPS United, whose dream he tried to destroy, using them as pawns in a chess battle, by bringing referees we know are embedded with TP Mazembe.

For not being there for us, when we were expelled from the 2018 World Cup qualifiers, for the horror our brothers across the Limpopo suffered in Lubumbashi in 2013 which Hayatou ignored, for all the diabolical refereeing decisions that have gone against us and for always making us play away from home in the final decisive matches.

It might have taken us more than two decades but we are Warriors, we never forget those who mess up with us and, as Hayatou probably knows now, as he settles into a retirement where the skeletons in the CAF cupboard — which his iron grip on the game on the continent had helped conceal will start tumbling down one after the other — he made a fundamental error of judgment to believe we are pussycats.

A movement, which started in our capital, toppled his dynasty and let him now face the music as the band plays on.

HAYATOU’S HIDDEN HAND IN BRINGING MAZEMBE REFEREES TO HARARE

Of course, we expected that our exclusive article about CAF’s shadowy plot to influence the outcome of tomorrow’s Champions League showdown between CAPS United and TP Mazembe by, somehow against all reason, appointing a referee with a history of favouring the Congolese giants would not be universally accepted in a country where club football divides, rather than, unites us.

There are many in this country who will celebrate should CAPS United fail tomorrow, because it nurses their inflated egos or because the Green Machine represent such an enemy they cannot bear to see it succeed, on any front and — given a choice — Mazembe are a better devil to them.

It’s the way football is, and we aren’t alone in this because even in Dar-es-Salaam last weekend, the Simba SC supporters were supporting Zanaco in the Zambians’ Champions League tie against their rivals Young Africans and, to some Arsenal fans, Spurs represent evil while Liverpool and Manchester United fans will never, ever, find common ground.

But we are guided by national interests and, for us, what matters are not the petty inter-club rivalries but what enhances the profile of our country and that’s why we were hurt when Dynamos were robbed in Abidjan by Hayatou, we were horrified when Bosso were robbed in Cameroon by this man and his empire and why we had to expose the controversy related to how a referee, known for favouring Mazembe, can be appointed to handle tomorrow’s big game.

For all the shenanigans, we stand by our ambassadors and we say fear not Kepekepe because if you managed to stand the heat in Lubumbashi what can stop you from doing well at home and, after all, didn’t they say Hayatou can’t be defeated, but we downed him, didn’t they say Leicester City didn’t stand a chance in the Champions League but look where the Foxes are today.

There will always be a number of doubting Thomases in our world, it’s the way life is, and even the children of Israel doubted that Moses was taking them to the Promised Land as instructed by the Lord leading Pastor Charles Charamba to pen that classic song, about Moses and not their Moise as in Katumbi, which I will recreate today for my doubting Green Machine countrymen and women.

‘Lloyd, Lloyd, Lloyd weeee

Lloyd, Loyd, Lloyd weeee

Lloyd, Lloyd, Lloyd weeee

Tidzorere Egypt ku Highfield kwatakakurira

Zvakavatambudza vana veMakepekepe

Panhandare hombe vakatanga kuchema

Chiona Lloyd wazotiparira zvino

Tidzorere Egypt kwatakakurira

Sundowns mberi kwedu, Mazembe shure kwedu

Tidzorere Egypt kwawakatitora

Isusu zvaive nani dai watirega

Tichigara zvedu savaranda ku Egypt

Mumwe ne mumwe akatsutsumwa nazvo

Handizvo Lloyd zvawanga wavimbisa izvi

Isisu zvaive nanidai watirega

Tichigara zvedu savaranda ku Egypt

Mumwe ne mumwe akatsutsumwa nazvo

Ndodzoka Egypt uko kwandakabva

Ndozvipirawo zvangu kufira muuranda

Pane kufira pano panhandare iwe Lloyd

Zvakafanana izvi, inga zvakafana

Kurarama zvedu tirimuhunhapwa

Pane kuparara muhondo yenhabvu iyi

Tidzorere Egypt kwatakakurira

Lloyd akati kwavari, shiiii, nyararai zvenyu

Nyararai zvenyu vana veMakepekepe

Idzi mhandu dzeMazembe dzinokunetsai

Dzichaparara hamuchadzione rimwe zuva

Imi ndinoti kwamuri, shiiiii, vadikanwi hama

Nyararai zvenyu vana venyika yedu yeZimbabwe

Ndisu vaye vokudonhedza uye waizviti nyanzvi anonzi Hayatou

Mazembe mhandu dzenhabvu dzichaparara hamuchadzione rimwe zuva’

And, with that faith, the Warriors of Zimbabwe dethroned Hayatou and the Green Machine, just like the Israelites at the Red Sea, passed the Mazembe test and lived to fight another day in the CAF Champions League.

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Come on CAPS United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rooneyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy (pity he isn’t playing)

Text Feedback – 07192545199 (I migrated to OneFusion)

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Chat with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber or read my material in The Southern Times or on www.sportszone.co.zw. The authoritative ZBC weekly television football magazine programme, Game Plan, is back on air and you can interact with me and the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika and producer Tich “Chief” Mushangwe every Monday evening.

WHAT RACISTS CAN DO . . . Dasha Zhukova, partner of Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, has issued a public apology in the wake of the global outrage torched by this picture of her seating on a designer Bjoarne Melgaard chair, which resembles a scantily dressed black woman

WHETHER by design or default, the sporting gods had to make sure that the Democratic Republic of Congo would be a defining feature in this compelling tale — a football version of a titanic boxing showdown 43 years ago which is widely considered as the greatest sporting event of the 20th Century.

They dubbed it Rumble In The Jungle, an iconic battle for the world heavyweight crown at Kinshasa’s Tata Raphael Stadium, pregnant with a combination of both brutality, a remarkable display of courage and a never-say-die spirit that provided the beauty to the ugliness of this titanic conflict.

A defiant challenger being battered for seven rounds by a monster of a champion — who had the advantage of being the younger and bigger fighter at the peak of his athletic powers — being dragged to the limits of what a body could endure, what a man could take, enduring torment that stretched physical boundaries and smashed pain thresholds.

Where mere mortals would have long surrendered, but somehow defiantly refusing to throw in the towel.

And at the end of it all, the underdog, who was never given a chance to win this contest, summoning energy from a fountain hidden somewhere in his battered body, in the eighth round, to knock out the champion.

Somehow, the sporting gods would ensure that the DRC — 43 years after it transformed itself into the theatre that provided the setting for a rank underdog to write the world’s greatest sporting event — would also feature prominently in another giant-killing act, this time in football, which had a similar ringing tone.

CAPS United, please tell me, what have you guys just done?

Like Ali in the Rumble In The Jungle, using the DRC to inscribe your name into immortality, like Ali in the Rumble In the Jungle, having the inner strength to weather the worst ferocious battering one can ever get in a sporting contest and still live to enjoy the sweet taste of success, like Ali in the Rumble In The Jungle, defying insurmountable odds to emerge as the most unlikely of victors.

Like Ali in the Rumble in the Jungle just hanging on those ropes, as the opponent threw everything at you, refusing to be swallowed by the shame of defeat, refusing to be subdued by the darkness of elimination, refusing to be crushed by the pain of being knocked out and refusing to be swept away by the tide of elimination.

Like Ali in the Rumble In The Jungle, refusing to be lured by the temptation of surrender, which at times looked like the best way out of that pounding and, like Ali in the Rumble In the Jungle, having the courage to fight on, to hang on in there and, when it mattered most, find the strength to throw the knockout punch.

Makepekepe, can you please tell me, what have you guys just achieved?

Tell me boys that this isn’t a dream, and just in case it is, please don’t wake me up to face the nightmare that it all wasn’t real — the enduring beauty of that occasion when victory was secured, the captivating sights and sounds of that moment when success was confirmed, the pride of being winners, later-day Davids who dethroned this Goliath.

Football, what a beautiful game!

A TALE TOLD BY A GENIUS, FULL OF SOUND AND FURY AND REPRESENTING GREATNESS

When George Foreman arrived in Kinshasa for the Rumble In The Jungle in October 1974, he was this unbeaten, and some said unbeatable hybrid specimen who had put together an impressive 40-0 record, including 37 knockouts, an emperor who ruled the ring with a touch of genius and a streak of ruthlessness.

And, as fate would have it, when Congolese giants TP Mazembe arrived in Harare last week, they also had put together a 4-0 (it reads like Foreman’s 40-0, doesn’t it?) Champions League record against Zimbabwean clubs with Dynamos being hammered 1-4 in their two matches while Monomotapa had been thrashed 0-7.

In 31 CAF Champions League knockout matches, before the group stages, since they started ruling the continent again in 2009, TP Mazembe had — ahead of the game against Makepekepe on Sunday — won 18, drawn eight and lost just five.

Against Southern African opposition, they had been virtually unbeatable, thrashing Zambia’s Power Dynamos 7-1 on aggregate in 2012, hammering Botswana’s Mochudi Centre Chiefs 7-0 on aggregate in 2013, destroying Petro Atletico de Luanda of Angola 5-1 on aggregate in 2009 and, lest we forget, massacring Monoz 7-0 and thumping DeMbare 4-1.

They eliminated Mamelodi Sundowns 3-2 on aggregate, after a 3-1 win in their Lubumbashi fortress, in 2015, a year before the Brazilians emerged as the best team on the continent.

Only Orlando Pirates had stood up to Mazembe, knocking them out in that second round battle in 2013, but even then, just to show how difficult this was, the Soweto giants needed the heroics of the late ‘keeper Senzo Meyiwa to save two controversial penalties in Lubumbashi, including one with the last kick of the game.

Surely, how could CAPS United, just emerging from the wilderness where they had been lost for more than a decade, compete against such a giant that, in the course of their time in the darkness, has not only won three Champions League titles, including one just two years ago, but also reached the final of the FIFA Club World and also won the CAF Confederation Cup?

Some even feared the Green Machine would be hammered, like Power Dynamos before them, 7-1 on aggregate, like Mochudi Centre Chiefs before them, 7-0 on aggregate, like Petro Atletico before them, 5-1 on aggregate, like our Dynamos before them, 4-1 in their two matches and, like our Monoz before them, 7-0 in their two meetings.

After all, no southern African team had managed to avoid defeat, in Lubumbashi, since Mazembe reinvented themselves into a force on the continent in 2009 and Mochudi Centre Chiefs had conceded six goals just three years ago, Power Dynamos had conceded six goals just four years ago, Mamelodi Sundowns had conceded three goals just two years ago and Monoz had conceded five goals in that stadium.

But, like Muhammad Ali in the Rumble In The Jungle, Makepekepe refused to be bullied by history, to be buried by the past, to be intimidated by bygones and, in a remarkable display of both bravery and the kind of never-say-die spirit that powered Ali to victory in Kinshasa, the Green Machine scripted a tale told by a genius, full of sound and fury, and signifying greatness by toppling the giant.

They did it through sheer guts, teamwork where every player contributed even though the contribution of ‘keeper Edmore Sibanda was very, very special, and in the process they became the first Southern African club to concede just one goal, over 180 minutes of Champions League action, against Mazembe since this club was rebuilt into this giant eight years ago.

And, remarkably, they became the first Southern African football club to score in Lubumbashi in the Champions League, since Mazembe was remodelled into this giant in 2009, in the knockout matches of this tournament.

To achieve all this, against a team whose financial muscle cannot only make them woo some of the best players from Cote d’Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Ghana, Zambia, Iraq and Belgium, but build a $35 million ultra-modern stadium, buy two private passenger jets, including a customised 140-seater MD-80 jet fitted with a 16-seat VIP Lounge, can afford a wage bill of $5 million a year and can pay their best players $500 000 a year, was simply incredible for Makepekepe.

Maybe some things are just meant to be, it’s the way fate probably reminds us of its overbearing strength over us — like the DRC providing the setting for the Rumble In The Jungle and then a club from that country providing football with its version of big George Foreman going down in that mega fight against Muhammad Ali, as was the case when CAPS United knocked out Mazembe.

Or, in the case of the triumphant Green Machine president, providing us with a man whose first name, when translated into English, means “Be Happy”.

And when his mother named him Farai, she probably didn’t know that one fine day her son would help make an entire nation happy, as was the case on Sunday.

WE NOW KNOW WHAT WE CAN DO IF WE UNITE FOR A COMMON GOAL

But CAPS United can never claim monopoly of this success story, should never claim they did all this alone because, more than just being a project for our Champions League representatives, we all turned it into a national project where the entire country played its part in ensuring the Green Machine would be given the best chance to succeed.

Never, in the history of this tournament, has this newspaper gone so far, for the cause of a club side, fighting in its corner to ensure it was given a level playing field to pursue its dreams of Champions League success.

Never, in the history of this tournament, has this giant newspaper organisation embedded itself in a local football club, the way we did in the week leading to Sunday’s decisive game and it’s something that I should know because I have been here for a very long time, a quarter-of-a-century to be precise.

Of course, there were some people who sharply criticised us, when we unmasked Bernard Camille as TP Mazembe’s “Mr Fix-It”, the referee the Congolese giants and their CAF partners turned to whenever they wanted the Lubumbashi club to succeed, saying it was wrong for us to fight in the corner of a club as if it was our national team.

We expected that because on the minefield of domestic football where rivalries run very deep we knew there would be some, among us, who would celebrate should CAPS United fall and it’s something that is normal in the abnormality of this game and we weren’t surprised to see scores of locals wearing Mazembe T-shirts in the VVIP Enclosure at the giant stadium on Sunday.

But crucially, that didn’t sway us from doing what we felt was right, from playing a front-line role for the cause of a club that was fighting for our country and when our colleagues at The Sunday Mail continued with the campaign, telling Camille that they were also watching him, we felt relieved.

Pushed into a corner, into the spotlight, there was no way the Seychelles referee could afford to make the kind of questionable decisions — like those two ghost penalties he gave to Mazembe against Pirates — on Sunday.

And, when it had all ended, we were glad that he had given both teams a fair chance to win the match with a very professional job because that is all we expect from referees.

For us, what matters are the lessons that we learnt from the past two weeks, especially the fact that, when we are united as a nation for a common cause, for the same goal, nothing can stop us and not even five-time African champions, with a history of destroying Southern African football clubs, can defeat us.

Yes, let’s party Zimbabwe because this is our victory, it belongs to you guys and also to us — those Dynamos and Highlanders fans who came to support Makepekepe, the DeMbare boss who called on his fans to rally behind their arch enemy, the Air Force of Zimbabwe who made the players feel loved with those helicopters, ZIFA president Philip Chiyangwa for his coup in Ethiopia that ushered in a new order where clubs like Mazembe would now never be helped by their closeness to the old CAF leaders.

For me, it has been quite a week at the office with my workmates, including some I never thought would have any interest in football, bombarding me with congratulations every time I run into them in the lift, for doing the right thing, not for CAPS United, but for their country, with the way we approached our coverage for the game.

And on Thursday, tears almost came down my cheeks when Albert Nhamoyebonde, the director of the Mufakose Tennis Coaching Agency that produced some of the best black players to come out of this country, burst into my office to tell me he was proud of what we did and how he remained glued on his TV set on Sunday hoping for the best.

Now, when you consider that Albert is a lifelong Dynamos fan who once told me that his first outing with his wife, before their marriage, was to watch a DeMbare game and how she was just swept away by what she saw that afternoon, I guess you understand why it felt so special when he saluted me for fighting in CAPS United’s corner.

Come on guys, when we unite for a common cause, we can realise why we are the greatest nation on this planet.

And, as I told you last week, it’s not a coincidence we are the most educated people Africa has ever seen, and will ever see, the most resilient nation the world has ever seen, or will ever see, a people who have lived under the yoke of sanctions, but refuse to fall, a nation that was driven to the gates of hell by the worst hyper-inflation to hit a country since Nazi Germany during World War II, but still found a way back to earth.

A nation whose last rites have been read, again and again, but stubbornly refuses to die, a country of about just 15 million people that can provide the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) with a visiting research fellow (jet propulsion lab) in Arthur Mutambara, the world’s third largest mining company, Lonmin, with its chief executive in Ben Magara, Emirates with its black African captain of the double-decker Airbus A380, the biggest and most sophisticated passenger plane in service in the world today, in Captain Matambanadzo Chakorera.

A small landlocked African nation on the southern tip of the world which is blessed by the Lord to ensure that, when those who created the game of cricket, the English, wanted a coach to help them end 18 years of the ultimate pain inflicted by their biggest rivals in the Ashes showdown, it had to be a Zimbabwean, Duncan Fletcher, who would engineer that triumph over Australia in September 2005.

I told you that show me a smaller African nation that has given the world a number one in golf, with three Majors to his credit, a European Cup winner in football, a serial winner of the English league championship, a world number one diver, a leading world number one swimmer, a leading mobile telecommunications entrepreneur and has the best climate in the world you can play cricket in winter then I will show you people who make a living selling coal to the Hwange Colliery Company, Chibuku Super to Delta Beverages or bread to Lobels Bakery.

Issa Hayatou now knows us and Moise Katumbi now understands that the world doesn’t call us Warriors for nothing.

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Come on CAPS United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rooneyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy (pity he isn’t playing)

Text Feedback – 07192545199 (I migrated to OneFusion)

WhatsApp Messenger – 07192545199

Email – robsharuko@gmail.com

Skype – sharuko58

• Chat with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber or read my material in The Southern Times or on www.sportszone.co.zw. The authoritative ZBC weekly television football magazine programme, Game Plan, is back on air and you can interact with me and the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika and producer Tich “Chief” Mushangwe every Monday evening.

THE striking irony of it all was that the boisterous party at the Camp Nou got underway the minute it became evident to the army of Barcelona fans that their dreams for a second straight home Champions League miracle had been shattered by an impregnable black-and-white Italian Wall.

Rather than abandon their players, after it became apparent the battle had been lost and there would be no sequel to that Miracle Against Paris, the Barca fans stayed in their fortress to witness the end of their latest campaign to be kings of Europe and endure the pain that came with such a shattering experience.

And remarkably, they even started a big outdoor party whose sights and sounds under the lights of Europe’s biggest stadium was something to behold — their voices drowning the cheers of the visiting victors — their blue-and-garnet colours, known as the Blaugrana, providing a fitting and spectacular backdrop to the occasion.

A people united by their doomed mission, a city at peace with its favourite club’s failure to perform another miracle, Catalonia pride flowing in that mist of gloom and providing a rainbow of light in the darkness of that boulevard of shattered dreams to make the losers somehow find a compelling reason to celebrate and sing at the end:

Blue and claret blowing in the wind

One valiant cry

We’ve got a name that everyone knows:

Barça, Barça, Baaarçaaaa.’’

How was that possible?

How could a team, which has achieved so much in the past few years in which it has transformed itself into the perfect template of what a football club should be, attract such sympathy on the occasion of their humiliation — in their own fortress — in which its star-studded trio had fired blanks just weeks after putting six past the boys from Paris?

How could a team, which had Messi, Suarez and Neymar — the finest attacking machine in world football which had scored in their 15 straight Champions League matches, in their home ground, leading up to the match against these Italian giants, suddenly fail to find the scoring touch, but yet, still enlist such a wave of sympathy, and support from their fans at the end of the match?

How could a team which had scored 21 goals in their last four previous Champions League matches at home this season and whose last failure to get — at least a goal — in both legs of this tournament having come four years ago when Bayern Munich managed to stop them scoring over 180 minutes, somehow fail this time around, but crucially find their fans in full voice in support of their adventure despite this failure?

Oh, yes, the other team to stop Barca from scoring in both legs of a Champions League contest was Manchester United, my Red Devils, but that was way back in the 2007 /2008 campaign and why is it that even after their team ensured it would for the first time in 50 Champions League matches feature in a game that ended goalless, the Catalan fans still found a reason to cheer their men at the end of the painful and doomed adventure on Wednesday night?

Surely, why would the gods of football punish them in such ruthless fashion by ensuring that these tears would flow in the very year that Barca are celebrating the 60th anniversary of moving into the Camp Nou, which has become their fortress, which the likes of Messi have turned into a slaughter chamber for visiting clubs over the years?

To understand all this you need to understand what Barca stands for, understand what it means when they say it’s more than a football club, understand why for 111 years, this institution resisted the temptation to do what they considered to be abusing their soul by selling the rights of the front part of their jersey to a sponsor and for five years they even paid UNICEF for carrying their logo on their shirts.

For these proud Catalans there is even more honour in losing the way they did on Wednesday — when their all wasn’t good enough — than winning in circumstances so dubious, as was the case with their biggest rivals Real Madrid who got a big helping hand from the referees in a match officiating display that was so diabolical it flirted on the boundaries of match-fixing — that the victory is overshadowed by the controversy generated by referees from hell.

In today’s high-stakes football world, where results seemingly mean everything and a Minister can call his failing national team “A BUNCH OF LOSERS,” there is little space for heroes in defeat even when, as Barca did in this battle, play against an opponent of a high defensive pedigree that remains unbeaten in the Champions League away from home this season.

WHEN THE BARCA FANS TOOK ME ON A JOURNEY BACK INTO THE PAST

Listening to those songs of both defiance and redemption at the conquered Camp Nou, watching those tears, in that boisterous party as this proud club finally acknowledged as we did when they thrashed us at Wembley in that Champions League final in 2011 that you can’t win everything in this game, that there are some defeats that carry a touch of integrity, it felt great.

That outpouring of love at the Camp Nou for a team that had done everything for the cause of its badge, the cause of its constituency, the cause of its people, but fell short, thanks to the defensive masterclass of a thoroughbred opponent, took me on a journey back into the past when I had the privilege to be part of such a knowledgeable and appreciative crowd that saw the virtues of their club’s performance even in the mist of the gloom of a failed adventure.

Back in the day when we had real football fans, like the late Taribo West who, as some have generally said it again and again, would pay the ultimate prize for his beloved Glamour Boys saying he succumbed to the injuries inflicted during a battering he received after violence broke out at Barbourfields.

Or when we had two CAPS United fans, affectionately known as “Madhara Ematumbu” would entertain us with their antics, or when Liqwa Gama would lead the Bosso roadshow, wherever his beloved Highlanders went, always being there in the trenches with his team, always in their corner and making such a huge impression they ended up taking him on board the club’s leadership structures.

Back in the day when the biggest fan at Masvingo United was a blind man who, without fail, would always be at Mucheke to cheer his football club, his love affair with Yuna Yuna not diluted by the fact he never saw any of his heroes or any of their goals.

Long before the arrival of H-Metro and how it has brought with it the celebrity fan who comes to the stadium looking for a chance to get captured by the tabloid’s cameras so that his picture can be featured on the newspaper’s Social Scene page, long before the arrival of Facebook which has brought with it the celebrity fan — who usually stays at home and never comes to the stadium — but is the biggest critic of events he or she hardly watches to give him a basis for such authoritative analysis.

When everything was pure, when going to football matches was something close to a religion, when my good old buddie Kudzi Shaba was still a Vietnam hooligan who derived a lot of pleasure in his status even though his day job as a bank teller, back in those days, required some sort of decency in his behaviour.

And, as the Camp Nou exploded in songs of defiance and celebration on Wednesday night, despite their beloved Barca’s elimination from the Champions League, those fans inside that giant fortress took me on a journey back to that unforgettable afternoon at the National Sports Stadium in 1996 when I had the privilege to be part of a cultured Dynamos crowd that found gold in the wreckage of their Champions League’s shattered dreams.

A people who found a reason to appreciate that, even in a lost cause, there could be an element of honour — as long as their men had put in a shift consistent with their expectations, as long as their troops had fought long and hard for the cause of their club, for the cause of their constituency and for the cause of everyone who believed in them — as was the case that afternoon.

Those Glamour Boys had succumbed to a 1-5 battering at the hands of Shooting Stars in Nigeria, in the first leg of the second round of the ’96 Champions League, with the majority of the players returning home with sickening tales of how they had been abused by a refereeing system designed to ensure their hosts didn’t only win that match, but do so comprehensively.

But, still, more than 40 000 DeMbare fans converged at the giant stadium for the second leg and their patronage and never-say-die spirit was rewarded by an attacking performance from their men, rich in purity, it remains one of this great club’s finest performances on the continent.

That, in the end, the scoreline was just 3-1 in favour of Dynamos, just two short of the five required to take this contest into an improbable penalty shoot-out was largely because of an inspired show by visiting ‘keeper Abioudun Baruwa who single-handedly repelled everything that was thrown at him that afternoon and whose quality would eventually see him playing in Austria, Wales and England and for the Super Eagles.

And, when the game was over, the fans at the National Sports Stadium rose in unison to give their Glamour Boys a standing ovation, even in the mist of DeMbare’s elimination from the Champions League, saluting them for serving their institution with distinction even on an afternoon when the mission had failed.

Sunday Chidzambwa, who was the coach back then, was moved to tears — the first and only time I have seen this gritty Warrior cry — as he struggled to contain the emotions provoked by the outpouring of love from the stands on a day when his soul was being tormented by a toxic combination his men’s failure, to write one of the greatest comeback stories in this tournament’s history, and the quality of a performance that merited more.

LLOYD MUTASA, THE ONE FATED NEVER TO BE LOVED, TO BE HONOURED

Others will tell you there is no honour in defeat, there is no virtue in celebrating elimination, no reason to bask in the sunshine when you have failed, when the mission has been doomed and, while their argument might carry some substance, for some of us — who had the privilege of being witnesses to the events of that day — will only say “forgive them Lord, for they don’t know what they are saying.’’

The statistics say it all — that DeMbare team was the only side, that year, to score more than two goals against that Shooting Stars side — in the Nigerians’ 10 matches in a Champions League campaign, in which the Ibadan side scored 17 goals, as they went all the way losing on penalties to Zamalek of Egypt after a 3-3 aggregate draw.

The Glamour Boys were the only club to beat that Shooting Stars side — which also eliminated holders Orlando Pirates and JS Kabylie of Algeria along the way — by a margin of more than two goals and when you consider that the Nigerians ‘keeper won the man-of-the-match award on that afternoon, I hope you get a good impression of the purity of that DeMbare’s show that day.

Poor Lloyd Mutasa, the one fated never to be loved and never to be honoured, missed both legs of that match, when he was at the very peak of his athletic powers, with an injury, but together with more than half his teammates from that Class of Glamour Boys, they would prove they were such a formidable side two years later by reaching the final of the Champions League.

Mutasa, scorer of the goal that beat Eagles Cement in their backyard, on DeMbare’s return to Nigeria in ’98, in a belated payback for the Nigerians for the way Shooting Stars had thrashed the Glamour Boys two years earlier in controversial fashion — aided by two penalties plucked from hell — played in both legs of the ’98 Champions League final against ASEC Mimosas.

Almost 20 years to those wild events in Abidjan, Mutasa is still in the trenches of his Glamour Boys, working for this huge football institution, crying out to be loved by fans who seemingly don’t believe in him, the way cruel fate ensured he would eliminated from the grand battles against Shooting Stars in ’96.

After guiding DeMbare to the Independence Cup success, which triggered wild celebrations — from a constituency desperate for success — which spilled into Harare’s Central Business District, Mutasa has spent the week pleading for patience from his club’s fans to enable him to build the foundation for a team, just like in 2011, which can help the Glamour Boys dominate the domestic scene again.

Back then, he was fired after having built a strong team, amid an outpouring of hatred from fans who felt he wasn’t up to the task, and Callisto Pasuwa came in and the rest, as they say, is history.

But, even in this unforgiving game, there are some who credit DeMbare’s four-year dominance of the Premiership under Pasuwa to the foundation built by Mutasa, those who say that had Cuthbert Malajila’s clearance been processed in time back then, things would have turned out differently for this coach.

Poor Lloyd can only wonder how things might have been different for him if the Glamour Boys — just Barcelona on Wednesday night — still had the kind of fans like the ones in ’96 who still believed of a miracle despite their team’s 1-5 thrashing in Nigeria with more than 40 000 coming to the National Sports Stadium to back their cause.

And, just like the Barcelona fans on Wednesday night who cheered their team in defeat, poor Lloyd can only wonder how things could turn out differently for him, this time around, if the Glamour Boys still had the kind of supporters who gave Mhofu and his men a standing ovation at the giant stadium in ’96 despite their elimination from the Champions League.

Those whose job, like those Barca fans, is to just sing for their men:

DeMbare iteam yedu

Zora Butter usekerere

Kana ndafa usandicheme

Ndoenda ndega, pahukama

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rushhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Text Feedback — 07192545199 (I migrated to OneFusion)

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Email — robsharuko@gmail.com

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Chat with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber or read my material in The Southern Times or on www.sportszone.co.zw. The authoritative ZBC weekly television football magazine programme, Game Plan, is back on air and you can interact with me and the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika and producer Tich “Chief” Mushangwe every Monday evening.

A SOURCE OF JOKES . . . It’s now exactly two years since Dynamos launched their “DeMbare TV”, but on the second anniversary of that announcement, it’s worth noting this is a project that failed to take off the ground and those who welcomed it with Internet jokes like this image probably had a point after all

SHARUKO ON SATURDAY
THE striking irony of it all was that the boisterous party at the Camp Nou got underway the minute it became evident to the army of Barcelona fans that their dreams for a second straight home Champions League miracle had been shattered by an impregnable black-and-white Italian Wall.

Rather than abandon their players, after it became apparent the battle had been lost and there would be no sequel to that Miracle Against Paris, the Barca fans stayed in their fortress to witness the end of their latest campaign to be kings of Europe and endure the pain that came with such a shattering experience.

And remarkably, they even started a big outdoor party whose sights and sounds under the lights of Europe’s biggest stadium was something to behold — their voices drowning the cheers of the visiting victors — their blue-and-garnet colours, known as the Blaugrana, providing a fitting and spectacular backdrop to the occasion.

A people united by their doomed mission, a city at peace with its favourite club’s failure to perform another miracle, Catalonia pride flowing in that mist of gloom and providing a rainbow of light in the darkness of that boulevard of shattered dreams to make the losers somehow find a compelling reason to celebrate and sing at the end:

Blue and claret blowing in the wind

One valiant cry

We’ve got a name that everyone knows:

Barça, Barça, Baaarçaaaa.’’

How was that possible?

How could a team, which has achieved so much in the past few years in which it has transformed itself into the perfect template of what a football club should be, attract such sympathy on the occasion of their humiliation — in their own fortress — in which its star-studded trio had fired blanks just weeks after putting six past the boys from Paris?

How could a team, which had Messi, Suarez and Neymar — the finest attacking machine in world football which had scored in their 15 straight Champions League matches, in their home ground, leading up to the match against these Italian giants, suddenly fail to find the scoring touch, but yet, still enlist such a wave of sympathy, and support from their fans at the end of the match?

How could a team which had scored 21 goals in their last four previous Champions League matches at home this season and whose last failure to get — at least a goal — in both legs of this tournament having come four years ago when Bayern Munich managed to stop them scoring over 180 minutes, somehow fail this time around, but crucially find their fans in full voice in support of their adventure despite this failure?

Oh, yes, the other team to stop Barca from scoring in both legs of a Champions League contest was Manchester United, my Red Devils, but that was way back in the 2007 /2008 campaign and why is it that even after their team ensured it would for the first time in 50 Champions League matches feature in a game that ended goalless, the Catalan fans still found a reason to cheer their men at the end of the painful and doomed adventure on Wednesday night?

Surely, why would the gods of football punish them in such ruthless fashion by ensuring that these tears would flow in the very year that Barca are celebrating the 60th anniversary of moving into the Camp Nou, which has become their fortress, which the likes of Messi have turned into a slaughter chamber for visiting clubs over the years?

To understand all this you need to understand what Barca stands for, understand what it means when they say it’s more than a football club, understand why for 111 years, this institution resisted the temptation to do what they considered to be abusing their soul by selling the rights of the front part of their jersey to a sponsor and for five years they even paid UNICEF for carrying their logo on their shirts.

For these proud Catalans there is even more honour in losing the way they did on Wednesday — when their all wasn’t good enough — than winning in circumstances so dubious, as was the case with their biggest rivals Real Madrid who got a big helping hand from the referees in a match officiating display that was so diabolical it flirted on the boundaries of match-fixing — that the victory is overshadowed by the controversy generated by referees from hell.

In today’s high-stakes football world, where results seemingly mean everything and a Minister can call his failing national team “A BUNCH OF LOSERS,” there is little space for heroes in defeat even when, as Barca did in this battle, play against an opponent of a high defensive pedigree that remains unbeaten in the Champions League away from home this season.

WHEN THE BARCA FANS TOOK ME ON A JOURNEY BACK INTO THE PAST

Listening to those songs of both defiance and redemption at the conquered Camp Nou, watching those tears, in that boisterous party as this proud club finally acknowledged as we did when they thrashed us at Wembley in that Champions League final in 2011 that you can’t win everything in this game, that there are some defeats that carry a touch of integrity, it felt great.

That outpouring of love at the Camp Nou for a team that had done everything for the cause of its badge, the cause of its constituency, the cause of its people, but fell short, thanks to the defensive masterclass of a thoroughbred opponent, took me on a journey back into the past when I had the privilege to be part of such a knowledgeable and appreciative crowd that saw the virtues of their club’s performance even in the mist of the gloom of a failed adventure.

Back in the day when we had real football fans, like the late Taribo West who, as some have generally said it again and again, would pay the ultimate prize for his beloved Glamour Boys saying he succumbed to the injuries inflicted during a battering he received after violence broke out at Barbourfields.

Or when we had two CAPS United fans, affectionately known as “Madhara Ematumbu” would entertain us with their antics, or when Liqwa Gama would lead the Bosso roadshow, wherever his beloved Highlanders went, always being there in the trenches with his team, always in their corner and making such a huge impression they ended up taking him on board the club’s leadership structures.

Back in the day when the biggest fan at Masvingo United was a blind man who, without fail, would always be at Mucheke to cheer his football club, his love affair with Yuna Yuna not diluted by the fact he never saw any of his heroes or any of their goals.

Long before the arrival of H-Metro and how it has brought with it the celebrity fan who comes to the stadium looking for a chance to get captured by the tabloid’s cameras so that his picture can be featured on the newspaper’s Social Scene page, long before the arrival of Facebook which has brought with it the celebrity fan — who usually stays at home and never comes to the stadium — but is the biggest critic of events he or she hardly watches to give him a basis for such authoritative analysis.

When everything was pure, when going to football matches was something close to a religion, when my good old buddie Kudzi Shaba was still a Vietnam hooligan who derived a lot of pleasure in his status even though his day job as a bank teller, back in those days, required some sort of decency in his behaviour.

And, as the Camp Nou exploded in songs of defiance and celebration on Wednesday night, despite their beloved Barca’s elimination from the Champions League, those fans inside that giant fortress took me on a journey back to that unforgettable afternoon at the National Sports Stadium in 1996 when I had the privilege to be part of a cultured Dynamos crowd that found gold in the wreckage of their Champions League’s shattered dreams.

A people who found a reason to appreciate that, even in a lost cause, there could be an element of honour — as long as their men had put in a shift consistent with their expectations, as long as their troops had fought long and hard for the cause of their club, for the cause of their constituency and for the cause of everyone who believed in them — as was the case that afternoon.

Those Glamour Boys had succumbed to a 1-5 battering at the hands of Shooting Stars in Nigeria, in the first leg of the second round of the ’96 Champions League, with the majority of the players returning home with sickening tales of how they had been abused by a refereeing system designed to ensure their hosts didn’t only win that match, but do so comprehensively.

But, still, more than 40 000 DeMbare fans converged at the giant stadium for the second leg and their patronage and never-say-die spirit was rewarded by an attacking performance from their men, rich in purity, it remains one of this great club’s finest performances on the continent.

That, in the end, the scoreline was just 3-1 in favour of Dynamos, just two short of the five required to take this contest into an improbable penalty shoot-out was largely because of an inspired show by visiting ‘keeper Abioudun Baruwa who single-handedly repelled everything that was thrown at him that afternoon and whose quality would eventually see him playing in Austria, Wales and England and for the Super Eagles.

And, when the game was over, the fans at the National Sports Stadium rose in unison to give their Glamour Boys a standing ovation, even in the mist of DeMbare’s elimination from the Champions League, saluting them for serving their institution with distinction even on an afternoon when the mission had failed.

Sunday Chidzambwa, who was the coach back then, was moved to tears — the first and only time I have seen this gritty Warrior cry — as he struggled to contain the emotions provoked by the outpouring of love from the stands on a day when his soul was being tormented by a toxic combination his men’s failure, to write one of the greatest comeback stories in this tournament’s history, and the quality of a performance that merited more.

LLOYD MUTASA, THE ONE FATED NEVER TO BE LOVED, TO BE HONOURED

Others will tell you there is no honour in defeat, there is no virtue in celebrating elimination, no reason to bask in the sunshine when you have failed, when the mission has been doomed and, while their argument might carry some substance, for some of us — who had the privilege of being witnesses to the events of that day — will only say “forgive them Lord, for they don’t know what they are saying.’’

The statistics say it all — that DeMbare team was the only side, that year, to score more than two goals against that Shooting Stars side — in the Nigerians’ 10 matches in a Champions League campaign, in which the Ibadan side scored 17 goals, as they went all the way losing on penalties to Zamalek of Egypt after a 3-3 aggregate draw.

The Glamour Boys were the only club to beat that Shooting Stars side — which also eliminated holders Orlando Pirates and JS Kabylie of Algeria along the way — by a margin of more than two goals and when you consider that the Nigerians ‘keeper won the man-of-the-match award on that afternoon, I hope you get a good impression of the purity of that DeMbare’s show that day.

Poor Lloyd Mutasa, the one fated never to be loved and never to be honoured, missed both legs of that match, when he was at the very peak of his athletic powers, with an injury, but together with more than half his teammates from that Class of Glamour Boys, they would prove they were such a formidable side two years later by reaching the final of the Champions League.

Mutasa, scorer of the goal that beat Eagles Cement in their backyard, on DeMbare’s return to Nigeria in ’98, in a belated payback for the Nigerians for the way Shooting Stars had thrashed the Glamour Boys two years earlier in controversial fashion — aided by two penalties plucked from hell — played in both legs of the ’98 Champions League final against ASEC Mimosas.

Almost 20 years to those wild events in Abidjan, Mutasa is still in the trenches of his Glamour Boys, working for this huge football institution, crying out to be loved by fans who seemingly don’t believe in him, the way cruel fate ensured he would eliminated from the grand battles against Shooting Stars in ’96.

After guiding DeMbare to the Independence Cup success, which triggered wild celebrations — from a constituency desperate for success — which spilled into Harare’s Central Business District, Mutasa has spent the week pleading for patience from his club’s fans to enable him to build the foundation for a team, just like in 2011, which can help the Glamour Boys dominate the domestic scene again.

Back then, he was fired after having built a strong team, amid an outpouring of hatred from fans who felt he wasn’t up to the task, and Callisto Pasuwa came in and the rest, as they say, is history.

But, even in this unforgiving game, there are some who credit DeMbare’s four-year dominance of the Premiership under Pasuwa to the foundation built by Mutasa, those who say that had Cuthbert Malajila’s clearance been processed in time back then, things would have turned out differently for this coach.

Poor Lloyd can only wonder how things might have been different for him if the Glamour Boys — just Barcelona on Wednesday night — still had the kind of fans like the ones in ’96 who still believed of a miracle despite their team’s 1-5 thrashing in Nigeria with more than 40 000 coming to the National Sports Stadium to back their cause.

And, just like the Barcelona fans on Wednesday night who cheered their team in defeat, poor Lloyd can only wonder how things could turn out differently for him, this time around, if the Glamour Boys still had the kind of supporters who gave Mhofu and his men a standing ovation at the giant stadium in ’96 despite their elimination from the Champions League.

Those whose job, like those Barca fans, is to just sing for their men:

DeMbare iteam yedu

Zora Butter usekerere

Kana ndafa usandicheme

Ndoenda ndega, pahukama

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rushhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Text Feedback — 07192545199 (I migrated to OneFusion)

WhatsApp Messenger — 07192545199

Email — robsharuko@gmail.com

Skype — sharuko58

Chat with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber or read my material in The Southern Times or on www.sportszone.co.zw. The authoritative ZBC weekly television football magazine programme, Game Plan, is back on air and you can interact with me and the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika and producer Tich “Chief” Mushangwe every Monday evening.

THE IMAGES SAY IT ALL . . . This Brazilian newspaper captures the mood of their nation with pictures of captain Thiago Silva and David Luiz (left) and a young fan drenched in tears on the night the Samba Boys suffered a 1-7 humiliation in their 2014 World Cup semi-final battle against Germany in Belo Horizonte, the worst defeat suffered by the five-time World Champions in their World Cup history

Sharuko On Saturday
ON February 4, 2013, Super Bowl XLVII — an American football showdown between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers — exploded into life in New Orleans with 108.7 million Americans tuning in to watch.

A 30-second advertisement on CBS TV cost a staggering $4 million and viewership interest soared significantly, in the final six minutes of that titanic battle, as a record American television viewership of 164.1 million people tuned in to watch.

The Ravens, who came into that match as underdogs, had somehow defied the odds to build a 28-6 lead early in the third quarter, and looked well in control, until a lengthy power outage — which stopped play for 34 minutes — disrupted their concentration and opened a window for the 49ers to stage a remarkable comeback which spiked interest in the pay-per-view television viewership.

After largely being outplayed, following the restoration of power, the Ravens eventually found a way to hold off the 49ers’ late charge to win the battle 34-31 and hand their opponents their first Super Bowl defeat in six appearances.

Significantly, that game came just five days after CNN, and a number of international media organisations, published the findings of a survey conducted in the United States which found out that a quarter of Americans, which is one in every four, believed God has a say in the outcome of sporting events.

The survey, conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, found out that among non-white Christians and white evangelicals, 40 percent and 38 percent, believed God had a say in determining results in sport and so did 29 percent of Catholics and 19 percent of white mainline Protestants.

The institute’s chief executive, Robert Jones, said a significant number of people “have a very personal view of God, a God that is very active in their daily lives and very concerned about the things that matter to them (and given) sports are one of the things that matter, it stands to reason that God is playing an important role.”

The events of that night in New Orleans have left a lasting impression on the lives of millions of people and some will tell you it’s not just a coincidence the victorious team that day, the Baltimore Ravens, scored exactly the same number of points (34) as the exact number of minutes (34) that were lost to that power outage.

THE STORY OF RAY LEWIS

AND THE POWER OF FAITH

Others have pointed to the Ravens’ triumphant linebacker, Ray Lewis, playing in his final game of his 17-year National Football League professional career, as an example of what belief can reap you after he became the voice that regularly thanked God for their incredible adventure that season.

“God doesn’t make mistakes. One thing about God’s will, you can never see God’s will before it happens. You can only see it at the end. For His will to happen this way, I could never ask for anything else,’’ Lewis told reporters after his Ravens defeated the New England Patriots in the final battle for a place in the Super Bowl.

And, after his team’s Super Bowl success, Lewis told reporters: “When God is for you, who can be against you?’’

But, 13 years earlier, it was very different for Lewis.

He was arrested, together with two of his colleagues in Atlanta after two people — Jacinth Baker and Richard Lollar — were stabbed to death in a fight that broke outside a nightclub on January 31, 2000, after a Super Bowl XXXIV party.

Lewis and his friends — Reginald Oakley and Joseph Sweeting — were questioned by Atlanta police and 11 days later the three men were charged with murder and aggravated-assault.

Just two weeks into the trial, Lewis’ lawyers — Don Samuel and Ed Garland — negotiated a plea agreement for their client where the murder charges against the athlete were dropped in exchange he testified against his friends, Oakley and Sweeting, while Lewis also entered a guilty plea to a lesser charge of obstructing the course of justice.

The judge sentenced him to a 12-month probation, which meant he could continue his NFL career, with the league handing him a $250 000 fine, the highest possible in the circumstances.

The duo was acquitted of the murder charges in June 2000 and, until now, no other suspects have been arrested for the killings while the white suit Lewis was wearing on the night of the two murders has never been found.

Exactly a year after that chilling Atlanta incident, on January 28, 2001, Lewis became the first linebacker — since Chuck Howley in 1971 — to be named Super Bowl Most Valuable Player after leading the Ravens, the only team he played for throughout his professional career, to a 34-7 victory over the New York Giants.

Somehow, fate made sure that — in his Super Bowl XXXV triumph in 2001 and in his final professional match at Super Bowl XLVII in 2013, which he also won — Lewis and his Baltimore Ravens would score exactly the same number of points (34) in success stories spread 12 years apart.

Lewis was recently told by Shannon Sharpe, a former American football star-turned-television-presenter, in an interview later broadcast on CBS TV, that families of the two murdered men can’t understand why he is idolised by millions of fans when they believe he has been hiding a lot of information about those killings.

Asked if he had any words for those families, Lewis responded, “God has never made a mistake. That’s just who He is, you see . . . To the family, if you knew, if you really knew the way God works, He doesn’t use people who commit anything like that for His Glory.”

THE SEVEN-GOAL MASSACRE THAT HAS BEEN THE TALK OF TOWN

The inevitability that the strange nine-goal domestic Premiership game, in which Bantu Rovers massacred a hapless Yadah Stars 7-2 last Saturday, would spark both a social and mainstream media storm — which has been raging for the past week — was as predictable as it was very normal.

Ironically, some people who still find fascination in the Green Machine’s seven-goal mauling of the Glamour Boys 30 years ago, suddenly find it nauseating that a seven-goal hammering of Yadah Stars — just seven days ago — shouldn’t fascinate us all week.

And, as often happens in our deeply polarised society, the events at Luveve opened a window for some to tarnish the reputations of others and, for giving Prophet Magaya a platform to defend his decision for his team to play that match without its coaches — as wrong as it might have been — and I found myself being accused by some as fighting in his corner.

Even in an era where murderers are given the right for a fair trial, to be represented by a lawyer despite pleading guilty to their evil acts and can, after conviction, still be beneficiaries of extenuating circumstances as per the prerogative of a judge, we still find ourselves trapped in a society where some people believe those they don’t agree with should never be afforded a medium to be heard.

The provision of such a platform is translated, in their flawed judgment powered by both fury and conspiracy theories, as evidence that someone has been manipulated because all they want to hear, in their shell of darkness is nothing, but severe criticism of the person they believe is wrong and should never, in their world, be put to his defence.

And, in the prophet’s case, it’s even complicated because there are some who don’t agree with his ministry and have repeatedly dismissed him as someone who isn’t a true Man of God and they gang up, finding ammunition in his team’s hour of turmoil, to take a dig at him and anyone who gives him a platform to say something in defence of his decisions — whether they are right or wrong — is caught in the crossfire of their venom.

Such is their fury that, blinkered by their refusal to see anything save for the yearning of a hurricane of criticism for this man, anyone who dares give him a platform to say something is compromised by a relationship, in their world, only built by improper conduct.

What a shame!

I always wonder how Will Ripley, the only CNN correspondent allowed by the North Korean leaders to get into their country, interview them and report from that country was a Zimbabwean and all the insults which would have been thrown in his direction for allegedly having been bought by those North Koreans to tell their side of the story.

But, that’s the way life is, isn’t it?

For me, what matters, has been this incredible spiritual journey which the events at Luveve last Saturday helped me undertake, this week, as I searched for answers, found some fascinating links and read some powerful material, including British author Ben Arogundande’s interesting piece “Whose Side Is God On In Sports?’’

Ray Lewis will tell you the God we believe in, the One whom we pray to, can speak to us through sport and that’s why Lionel Messi always thanks the heavens every time he scores.

I have spent the whole week unable to get answers to questions I have been asking myself — is it just a coincidence that in those two Super Bowl matches which Lewis won in 2001 and 2013, his triumphant Baltimore Ravens side scored 34 points in both matches and if you add THREE and FOUR you get SEVEN?

Is it just a mere coincidence that when the time came for the Brazilians — a nation that has received more blessings than any other when it comes to football in this world in terms of talent and success in the World Cup — to be reminded that they are, just like all of us, mere mortals, it arrived in the form of a SEVEN-goal thrashing in their home World Cup with the grand stature of Christ The Redeemer overseeing their humiliation?

Is it just a mere coincidence that the Brazilian SEVEN-goal massacre — their worst defeat in a World Cup game — would come at the hands of a team, Germany, whose name is made up of SEVEN letters, in the year 2014, and if you add TWO plus ZERO plus ONE plus FOUR you also get the number SEVEN?

Is it just a coincidence that five of the goals that Germany scored, in that first half, came in the first 29 minutes and if you subtract TWO from NINE you get SEVEN, that the identity of the scorer of that fifth goal, KHEDIRA, has a name that has SEVEN letters while the name of the humiliated Brazilian coach, SCOLARI, also has SEVEN letters.

The SEVEN goals Germany scored that day took their World Cup tally to 223 goals and, if you add TWO plus TWO plus THREE you also get the number SEVEN.

There is a reason there are SEVEN days in a week.

And the Bible tells us the Lord would discipline Israel up to SEVEN-FOLD if it refused to obey Him (Leviticus 26:18); Jesus mentions SEVEN woes on the unrepentant in Matthew 23; there are SEVEN trumpets announcing judgments by God (Revelation 8:6); there are SEVEN angels pouring out the wrath of God in the Book of Revelation (16:1); there are SEVEN pairs of clean animals that were received in the Ark (Genesis 7:2) and there were SEVEN angels on the lampstand in the tabernacle (Exodus 25:37).

We are humans, that’s the bottom line, and — now and again even in sport — we get such reminders and for cricketer Donald Bradman, the greatest batsman who ever lived, that reminder came in his final innings when, needing just four runs to finish his career with a Test batting average of 100 in what would have been a representation of purity, he was dismissed for a duck (ZERO), bowled second ball by leg spinner Eric Hollies in the fifth and final Test of that 1948 Ashes series at London’s Oval.

It meant Bradman retired with a batting average of 99.94 runs.

His name, Bradman, of course, has SEVEN letters.

EVEN THE GREATEST NEEDED

A TOUCH OF FAITH

In exactly three weeks’ time, the world will mark the first anniversary of the death of a man widely considered the finest athlete who ever lived, legendary boxer Muhammad Ali, whose combination of a streak of arrogance, a flood of confidence and a touch of brilliance led him to describe himself as “The Greatest.’’

On June 4, last year, Ali — whose athletic prowess had an enduring impact on this world like no other athlete before, and after him in a remarkable journey that saw him being crowned three-time world heavyweight champion — died at a Phoenix hospital, where he was being treated for respiratory complications, in a final conclusion to a 32-year battle with Parkinson’s disease.

His death came exactly a dozen years after he published an autobiography, ‘THE SOUL OF A BUTTERFLY’, which he co-authoured with his daughter Hana Yaseem Ali and which gave a very powerful account of his life-long search for God.

“When I was about nine-years-old, I would wake up in the middle of the night and go outside to wait for an angel or a revelation from God,” Ali writes in his book.

“I would sit on the front porch, look up at the stars and wait for a message. I never heard anything, but I never lost faith, because the feeling was so strong in my heart.”

Ali always believed his faith in God would always ensure he would eventually prevail, even when faced massive odds like fighting an unbeaten, younger and more powerful opponent like George Foreman in their ‘Rumble In The Jungle’ showdown in Kinshasa in 1974.

“Allah has power over all things. If you believe in Him…even George Foreman will look like a baby,’’ Ali said.

“God’s got me here for something. I can feel it. I was born for everything that I’m doing now.”

And, true to his beliefs, Ali somehow weathered a barrage of vicious punches unleashed in a seven-round pounding by an opponent inspired by a streak of brutality and, from the depths of despair where a lot of mere mortals would have long surrendered from that infliction of pain that smashed the boundaries of what a human being can take, he found a way to draw strength from somewhere in the eighth round to knock out the champion.

“It’s a lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges and I believe in myself. My wealth is my knowledge of self, love and spirituality,’’ Ali noted.

And, years later, as he battled the effects of Parkinson’s, Ali — as he had done throughout a life in which he rose from humble surroundings to become the greatest athlete the world had ever know, and might ever know — still refused to let his faith be shaken away.

“Every step of the way I believe that God has been with me. And, more than ever, I know that he is with me now,’’ he said.

And, that was The Greatest himself, and — somehow — he had to die aged 74 (THAT NUMBER SEVEN AGAIN), and the first name his parents gave him, which he later dropped, was Cassius (AGAIN THOSE SEVEN LETTERS).

How many goals did Bantu FC score last Saturday — SEVEN. How many letters do we get from Bantu FC — SEVEN. How many letters do we get from the team they defeated Yadah FC — SEVEN, of course.

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!

Rashfoooord!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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The abandoned Premiership blockbuster between Highlanders and Dynamos dominated domestic football this week, sharply splitting opinion, and these two cartoons by the Chronicle’s Wellington Musapenda (left) and The Herald’s Innocent Mpofu probably portrayed that difference in the analysis of the events at Barbourfields

Sharuko on Saturday
REMARKABLY, parts of their charade which, for a fleeting moment this week turned them into some obscure reality TV stars as their madness played out live on television, even managed to produce a show whose snippets were part of the menu for SuperSport’s Soccer Africa programme on Thursday night.

Amazingly, not even Sizwe Mabhena and his cast of wise men could agree with the good Nigerian pastor, Idah Peterside, saying the Dynamos goal at Barbourfields on Sunday should have stood while Thomas Kwenaite and Jeff Katala argued the effort should have been ruled out for offside.

Incredibly, even after they had viewed replays again and again in that studio, they simply couldn’t agree whether Christian Ntoupa was offside, which doesn’t only demonstrate the complexity of judging that incident, but exposes those who rushed to repeatedly pronounce judgment with some suggesting it was so glaringly clear even a pilot in a jumbo jet would have made the right call to disallow it.

Interestingly, as the international experts who write and amend these rules, the ultimate authorities in making such decisions, tell us that it’s too close to call they need more time to review the television footage, one gets a feeling there are some, among us, starting to get that sinking feeling they were probably wrong to jump to conclusions and nail that defenceless assistant referee.

Poor Thomas Kusosa, just five months ago, there he was celebrating his finest hour when he was being honoured as the first runner-up to 2016 Referee of the Year, Ruzive Ruzive, when domestic football gathered for its annual prize-giving show where those who would have excelled are feted like kings.

Of course, he couldn’t win the Referee of the Year award because, the way they do it in this country, that gong always goes to the best centre referee while the best assistant referee during the season is handed the first runner-up award.

If one considers these awards as the hallmark for excellence, then Kusosa has been the best assistant referee in the domestic Premiership in the past five years as he was voted the first runner-up in 2012, second runner-up in 2013, second runner-up in 2014 and first runner-up last year.

He is also a member of the FIFA panel of international assistant referees and this year was supposed to be a special year for him because, after all, he turns 30.

However, no matter what he does from now onwards in his refereeing career, Kusosa will always be remembered as the assistant referee who was at the heart of the controversy that led to the abandonment of the country’s biggest club football game, in the first half, for the first time in this blockbuster showdown’s history.

That’s the way the world is, that’s the way the world will always be and that’s the way the world has always been, even in the days when William Shakespeare was writing his classic plays like Julius Caesar because, as Anthony told them, “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.’’

But, even if we all agree that Kusosa badly blundered in making that call — which, of course, isn’t true because that is yet to be confirmed by experts still reviewing that decision with even the world’s top refereeing expert telling The Herald that it’s too tight a call for him to make because the footage he has reviewed is inconclusive for a determination to be made — the big question remains.

Did that warrant those hooligans to force the abandonment of such a big game in the first half when it was still only tied 1-1?

A game which their Bosso, given the penetrative ability and energy they had shown that afternoon — on a day when they had the backing of one of their biggest support base in their fortress for a very, very, long time — had the potential of winning in the second half?

An opponent their Bosso had stretched to a penalty shootout, in its backyard, just a few weeks ago in the Independence Cup final with their men showing a remarkable never-say-die spirit to find the equaliser deep in time added on and force the spot-kick lottery?

An opponent that, if you ask me, was there for the taking given that it still remains trapped in its delicate rebuilding exercise and which had, in its ranks, a number of players playing in such a cauldron, in which the majority of the fans were supporting the opponents, for the very first time?

Even if we were to say Kusosa made a monumental blunder, with that call, can we really say that provides justification for the abandonment of such a big match and all percussions that come with all that — including insulting not only the images of the sponsors of the league, but also the very same sponsors of Bosso and DeMbare (BancABC) whose money has helped keep these two giants going in very difficult times — are worth it?

Call me whatever you want, criticise me all you can, insult me as much as you might find necessary, label me whatever you want — from a moron to a fool — but that won’t make me swallow your argument, if you believe that call by Kusosa should trigger the kind of hysterical backlash that should force the abandonment of such a big game.

OF COURSE, IN THIS GAME, THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR FAIRNESS

There is feeling, among some within the Bosso institution, that they are football’s version of Donald Trump and the whole establishment — from ZIFA, the PSL leadership, the referees, the assistant referees to the mainstream media — is ganged up against them.

And, these guys, also believe that this whole establishment is set up to help their biggest rivals Dynamos and they will tell you that this cartel has used every means possible to ensure their progress is derailed while the Glamour Boys’ cause is enhanced.

Some of the militant ones have even dared to accuse me of being part of this cartel, hitting me with volleys of tribal venom in which they accuse me of being a Shona and DeMbare sympathiser even though I have never hidden my proud heritage as a child of the old Zululand — an off-shoot of those waves of people who fled King Shaka with my forefathers’ immigration to the Chipata area of Zambia having been sparked by their loss in the Battle of Umhlatwe River near Nkandla and, like my late brother Willard Mashinkila-Khumalo, a proud Zimbabwean.

This week, amid all this raging controversy, some of them questioned why Norman Matemera kept a game, which Bosso were leading 1-0 at Rufaro in 2013, going on and on — way beyond the four minutes of time added on which had been prescribed — only to end the contest in the 96th minute after Partson Jaure had scored an equaliser.

Others also questioned why DeMbare were given a helping hand by assistant referee Bongani Gadzikwa, who disallowed a legitimate goal by Knox Mtizwa at Rufaro in 2015, which would have given their club a point they richly deserved in a game they lost 2-3, and that Gadzikwa was subsequently suspended, for making that poor call, provides justification to their belief that the playing field isn’t level.

Of course, I told them I totally agree with some of their concerns and that, in this game, there is no substitute for fairness and my learned lawyer colleagues will say the foundation of fairness is justice not only being done, but having been seen to be done.

But, crucially, I also told them it won’t help our football, in its quest to move forward, if they keep feeling that all the time they are the victims because the reality is that they are not and it would be important for them to break the shell of denial that makes them embrace the belief they are prisoners to a hostile system that will always ensure that their club’s football dreams are destroyed by this cartel.

That the same way they believe there is a conspiracy against Bosso from someone like Kusosa, which might certainly not be true, is the same way they should also accept that referee Bekezela Makeka wasn’t probably driven by a quest to help their team’s cause in the 2013 championship race when he added 16 minutes of time added on at Barbourfields, against a nine-man Triangle, and Bosso scored the winning goal a minute before the expiry of those astonishing 16 minutes of time added on.

And they should also accept that the same Makeka wasn’t probably also driven by the quest to give them an unfair advantage, three months earlier at the same stadium, when he left his seat, as the match official, and stormed onto the pitch to advise referee Philani Ncube to reverse his decision, to award a 10-man CAPS United a penalty.

To accept that, even though the CAPS United players protested furiously against the reversal of that penalty call, leading to a considerable stoppage of the game, the fact that they eventually continued with play — for the sake of the game — is what should always happen rather than force a match’s abandonment.

I GUESS, OF COURSE, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE TWO SIDES TO EVERY COIN

And, as I watched the raging debate at home, including in our media, sparked by the events at Barbourfields last Sunday, I ended up telling myself that, maybe, the best way to accept all this is that there will always be two sides to every coin and even in the United States right now they are struggling to find common ground on how to cover the political developments unfolding there.

I have noticed that while CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time magazine’s coverage of Donald Trump has tended to be sharply critical of the President, the right-leaning Fox News has chosen to be complimentary of him and were the first to suggest the other media organisations were leading “a political witch hunt” against the President.

Of course, I’m not a political authority, never was and never will be, finding very little fascination with a field where — unlike mine in the green fields of sport which Pele called beautiful — the winners and losers never tend to shake hands after their battles and it’s always them and us and nothing in between.

However, after my blog on the spirituality of the number seven — centred on Prophet Walter Magaya’s remarks the other week that as humans we need to concede there are some things whose occurrences we might never comprehend despite God blessing us with more intelligence than all the other animals — I was shocked to receive incredible feedback from all over the world.

And, as I watch all the drama unfolding in American politics — with some even daring to suggest they are now seeing some similarities to the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon in 1974 — I found it interesting that Trump, just like Nixon before him, has chosen to take a trip to the Middle East as was the case back then with Nixon.

How do we possibly explain that back in ‘74, Nixon — then reeling from Watergate — became the first American President to visit Saudi Arabia at a time of high political drama in the United States and Trump’s first port of call of his first foreign Presidential visit — amid all the political upheaval drama in the States right now — has to be Saudi Arabia?

Or, how do we explain this about two former American Presidents — Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy — who were both assassinated in office about 100 years apart?

Both Lincoln and Kennedy were elected to the House of Representatives in a year that ends in 46, with the former in 1846 and the latter in 1946.

Both were elected to the US Presidency in years that end with ‘60 — Lincoln in 1860 and Kennedy in 1960 and they beat the incumbent Vice Presidents with Lincoln defeating John C. Breckinridge and Kennedy defeating Nixon.

Both were succeeded by men whose surname was Johnson with Andrew Johnson taking over from Lincoln as President and Lyndon B. Johnson replacing Kennedy as President.

Both men suffered from genetic diseases with Lincoln having battled Marfan’s Syndrome while Kennedy had Addison’s disease.

Both were shot on a Friday, in the head, with Lincoln being shot on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, while Kennedy was shot on Friday November 22, 1963, sitting beside their wives, and their surnames had the identical number of letters (seven for Lincoln and seven for Kennedy).

The number of letters of the names of the assassins who shot the two Presidents — John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald — was also identical (15).

Both Lincoln and Kennedy were passionate about civil rights with Lincoln opposed to slavery while Kennedy helped the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Both Lincoln and Kennedy lost their third kids while still in White House with Lincoln’s son, 11-year-old William, succumbing to typhoid while Kennedy’s two-day-old boy Patrick Bouvier died just after birth from hyaline membrane disease.

President Lincoln was shot by Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC while Kennedy was shot by Oswald in Dallas while riding in a Lincoln Presidential open-top Presidential car manufactured by the Ford Motor Company.

After shooting Lincoln, Booth escaped from the theatre, where he worked as an actor, to hide in a warehouse while after shooting Kennedy, Oswald escaped from a warehouse, where he worked, and escaped into a theatre.

Incredibly, both assassins died in the same month as their Presidential victims with Booth dying in April, just like President Lincoln, while Oswald died in November, just like President Kennedy and, crucially, the day of the death of the two assassins was the same as their age with Booth dying on April 26, when he was 26, while Oswald died on November 24, when he was 24)

President Lincoln had a bodyguard named William (William H. Crook) while President Kennedy had a bodyguard called William (William Greer) with both bodyguards dying five months after their 75th birthdays.

Dr Charles Leale was the first surgeon who attended to President Lincoln after he was shot while Dr Charles Crenshaw was among the surgeons who attended to President Kennedy after he was shot and both Presidents died in a settlement with identical initials (PH) with Lincoln dying at Petersen House in Washington DC and Kennedy dying at Parkland Hospital in Dallas.

Apparently, Lincoln’s wife Mary Todd said the President had, for three consecutive nights before his killing, told her of a nightmare in which he dreamt of being assassinated and, after she was told he was dead, she said, “His dream was prophetic.”

Some things, maybe, are just meant to be.

But, for those who believe we are the worst, when it comes to all these controversies over match officiating, including some who choose to see a dosage of politics where there might be none, please just read a very informative piece by Spanish reporter Luis Mascaro, in the Sport newspaper, published in March this year in which he lists 32 refereeing decisions which have gone in favour of Real Madrid on both their domestic and continental front this season alone.

Of course, Madrid could win the Spanish championship again this weekend and become the first team to defend the UEFA Champions League but, for me, what has caught my attention, is that none of those 32 matches was abandoned.

And that is what matters.

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!

Rashfoooord!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Text Feedback – 07192545199 (I migrated to OneFusion)

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Email – robsharuko@gmail.com

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Chat with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber or read my material in The Southern Times or on www.sportszone.co.zw. The authoritative ZBC weekly television football magazine programme, Game Plan, is back on air and you can interact with me and the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika and producer Tich “Chief” Mushangwe every Monday night at 21.45pm.

SHARUKO ON SATURDAY
AFRICANS dominated the news this week, for both the good and the bad, in Manchester — a Libyan suicide bomber claiming the lives of 22 people and a footballer of Guinean descent giving this grieving city a reason to smile, amid all this destruction, with a starring Europa Cup final show.

Salman Abedi was just a 22-year-old when he blew himself up outside a pop concert on Monday night and, in the process, slaughtering 22 other people in a horrific terrorist attack to hit outside the home of iconic football club Manchester United.

And, two days later Paul Pogba, a 24-year-old whose parents came from Guinea to settle in France and who, in August, became the most expensive footballer in the history of the game to return and play for United from Juventus, was the star of the show as the Red Devils triumphed in the Europa Cup final to give grieving Mancunians a reason to smile in these troubled times.

Football has always had a unique way of providing a comforting blanket for Manchester in the city’s battles with tragedy and isn’t it ironic that in the year preceding the 50th anniversary of the Busby Babes’ ’68 European Cup success — which wiped off some of the tears triggered by the Munich plane crash — United should provide this city with something to cheer its spirits, this week, with their Europa Cup triumph?

And, just like in 1968, Portugal featured prominently in the tale. While United’s success in 1968 was against Portuguese giants Benfica, their success this week was masterminded by a Portuguese coach Jose Mourinho.

But, away from Manchester and its tale of tragedy and triumph this week, another African boy dominated headlines with Gabonese international forward Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang becoming the first footballer from the continent, after the legendary Ghanaian Tony Yeboah in the ‘90s, to win the Golden Boot in the Bundesliga.

Aubameyang, who has a frightening pace that makes you believe he would have made a success as a sprinter, and an eye for goal to rival the best forwards in the world, scored twice in his team’s final game last weekend to beat Polish striker Robert Lewandowski to the Golden Boot.

The Gabonese forward’s 31 goals ensured that he ended the Bundesliga’s 24-year wait for an African footballer to win the Golden Boot and he became only the third player from Borussia Dortmund to win that award.

The last Dortmund player to win the Golden Boot, Lewandowski, scored 20 goals during that season three years ago.

There is something special about Aubameyang that has made him hot property for a number of leading clubs from Europe and reports suggest he could even be traded to Real Madrid this European summer and, even if he doesn’t go there, the list of suitors is very long with Arsenal also part of the mix.

Interestingly, Aubameyang wasn’t born in Gabon, the national team that he plays for, but was born in France and, for some time, spent his childhood in Italy and this meant he was eligible to play for either the French or the Spaniards.

Given his talent, there is no questioning he would have made it into either the French or Italian national teams where his chances of winning the World Cup were better, but somehow, he chose to play for his fatherland.

On this year’s Nations Cup finals, the Gabonese national coach, Jose Antonio Camacho, even compared him to Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

“He’s one of the best in the world,” the Spaniard said. “It’s not just in Africa, it’s in all the confederations. It’s normal when you have such a player in your team, to rely on him. It’s the same with Messi at Barcelona or Ronaldo at Real Madrid. He is playing the same role for Dortmund.

“Gabon is very lucky to have such a great player in our squad, so it’s normal for us to rely on him.’’

The Gabonese team, which he captained, were knocked out in the group stages in a tournament held in their backyard, but given his talent which would have seen him win bigger titles playing for either France or Italy, Aubameyang doesn’t regret it all.

“Gabon has been a choice of heart,” the star, who represented France and Italy at youth level said. “Playing AFCON, it’s beautiful and playing at home is even more beautiful. “I could have chosen Spain because my mother is from Spain, (but) I wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps. My father had 80 caps for Gabon, many of them as the country’s captain.

“It was a decision made from my heart and for my family. It has always been my dream to make the people of Gabon happy. I made that dream come true by becoming Gabon’s first ever African Footballer of the Year.

“It’s my culture. I lived all the time in France, but it’s like I was born in Gabon. For me, this choice was easy because my father was my first favourite player. I was in the stadium watching him for the first time when I was maybe three years old, and straight away I knew I wanted to do it like him. That’s it.”

AND HE ISN’T THE ONLY ONE

Arsenal’s Alex Iwobi left Nigeria when he was about four and has lived all his life in London, but after impressing for the England youth teams, when it came to the senior national team, he chose his fatherland Nigeria.

“I understand why some England fans are surprised with my decision. It was a difficult one to make, one I thought very carefully about. I have no regrets,” he said.

“I have no regrets. When I was first invited by the Nigeria FA, my dad told me to follow my heart and that is what I have done. “I’m very proud to represent Nigeria, but I would like to say thank you to England for the chance they gave me, it was a difficult decision.

“The love Nigeria showed me, when I played for them in a friendly, the fans were just crazy. The fans almost eat you up because they love you so much. I’m enjoying playing for them.

“When you are getting out of the airport there are fans already there screaming ‘Arsenal, Arsenal. Gunners for life!’ and it’s just mad. “Some of them have Arsenal shirts and then others will ask me for Arsenal shirts. It’s a bit mad and the fans are crazy.”

AND WHAT ABOUT OUR BOYS?

Aubameyang and Iwobi play for the top clubs in Europe and earn huge sums of money and one would have expected them to be tempted by the comfort of the lives they have spent in that part of the world to try their luck to play for England, France or Germany.

But these guys were guided by their hearts that their motherlands needed them more and chose to come back home to represent the countries that meant so much for them and their family trees.

However, while these stars have chosen this path, it appears our boys — those who have links to this country through their parents who came from here — consider it an abomination to come back to Zimbabwe and represent the Warriors.

If we have to accept what the Warriors team manager Wellington Mpandare told the media this week, some of them have been saying they can’t come here because they aren’t so sure that we have the right kind of hotels to accommodate them.

My God!

Suddenly, some of these guys now believe that they are even bigger superstars than Michael Jackson, probably the greatest pop singer of all-time, who came down here and spent time at the Meikles Hotel which, now and again, is hailed as one of the best hotels in Africa it even brags that “there is only one Meikles.’’

If Andy Cole, who was a bigger star than some of our stars could come here and stay for days, lauding our comfort, surely how can these boys suddenly start believing that they are superstars who can’t be accommodated at any of our five-star hotels because they are sub-standard?

Why should these guys suddenly believe that we live in the Stone Age that all their good lives in England will be compromised should they come here for a week-long national duty while, interestingly, they have no issues about going to other places in West Africa, like Guinea, should we qualify for the Nations Cup finals, where the standards of hotels are pathetic?

Mpandare even suggested that one of the players said he was even glad to fly and play for the Warriors at the COSAFA tournament in South Africa and return to his base in England as long as he didn’t get into this country.

What utter rubbish!

Of course, this is a very emotive issue, but what I can’t understand is why suddenly we believe that we have to go down on our knees to beg these so-called First World stars for them to come and play for the Warriors when we have done decently, in recent years, in their absence?

Why are we in such a rush to try and rope them into the Warriors when their hearts are clearly not with this country and when they seemingly don’t want to be identified with us because they believe we are people still trapped in medieval times?

In any case, Mpandare should be telling us what the Warriors can really benefit from these players because, from my recollection, a number of them are not as good as Billiat or Musona and their only advantage is that they were born in England and it was easy for them to get a chance to play for the lower league sides in that country.

Aubameyang showed us that it’s about the heart, the passion to play for your fatherland, which matters and this is a real superstar, someone who can walk into the French team today and probably walk into the Spanish team today.

But he chose the place that his people call home.

No one begged him to come to play for Gabon, he did it on his own, and that’s what is wanted and not the way we are doing things where we go around the world trying to get anyone with links to this country and hoping they will say I will come and play for you even when they don’t associate themselves with this country.

It’s better to fail with people who have pride in calling themselves Zimbabweans, in good and bad times, than to succeed with a group that doesn’t believe they belong here and can’t wait, after a match, to fly back to the country they consider to be their home.

It’s better to be beaten, fielding players who believe this country is the be-all-and-end-all for them, because you can be rest assured they will give it their best shot, rather than bring in scores of players who don’t identify themselves with this country.

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rashfoooord!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Text Feedback — 07192545199 (I migrated to OneFusion)

WhatsApp Messenger — 07192545199

Email — robsharuko@gmail.com

Skype — sharuko58

• Chat with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber or read my material in The Southern Times or on www.sportszone.co.zw. The authoritative ZBC weekly television football magazine programme, Game Plan, is back on air and you can interact with me and the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika and producer Tich “Chief” Mushangwe every Monday night at 21:45pm.

SHARUKO ON SATURDAY
TIME indeed flies and on Monday a year would have passed since that glorious afternoon when our Warriors finally ended a decade-long wait for another dance with continental football aristocracy.

On June 5 last year, a three-goal demolition of Malawi at the National Sports Stadium secured our boys a third AFCON finals ticket — their first privilege pass for the biggest African football festival in 10 years — with the mission completed with a game to spare in the campaign.

Musona, having married his sweetheart Daisy a few days earlier, won and converted a penalty to ease the nerves, his decision to go for power and precision rather than the Panenka he had scored in the previous game, probably inspired by the significance of an occasion where there was no room for error, let alone comedy.

Khama volleyed home the insurance goal, connecting the ball with a sweet touch of genius, before substitute Malajila completed the rout.

And, as the country feted them like kings as they bathed in the sunshine of being the only men standing, amid the wreckage of a Southern African disastrous campaign, Musona could finally get the chance he needed to go away on a honeymoon he had postponed for a national cause.

In 18 days’ time, God willing, the fellow we call the Smiling Assassin will celebrate his 27th birthday and it’s hard to believe the boy wonder with those facial features of innocence that can hardly frighten a church mouse, who exploded on the scene just a few years ago, has quickly turned into a man.

For Musona, the boy from Norton who has evolved into this talismanic footballer for his country, the passage of time has also brought with it the gift of Knowledge.

When FIFA announced on their official website on December 7, 2010, that a new Zimbabwean football hero had arrived on the big stage, their announcement didn’t trigger a wave of excitement on a continent still struggling to shake off the hangover of having been the generation that finally saw the World Cup roadshow rolling into Africa for the first time.

Just five months had passed since the coronation of Spain as the world champions, on that bitterly cold night in Johannesburg, and Africa was still torn between the need to celebrate its successful hosting of the World Cup or cursing Luis Suarez whose “Hand of the Devil’’ had conspired to rob the continent of its finest football hour.

For those whose memories have limited data capacity or, for the sake of the generation of boys and girls born after that abomination at Soccer City on July 2, 2010, Suarez deliberately handled on the goal-line to stop Dominic Adiyah’s goal-bound header, in the last play of extra-time, was summarily dismissed, but his actions brought his country a lifeline in a brazen display of those dark moments when vice triumphs over virtue in this beautiful game.

Given all this drama, there was a lot for a continent still in mourning, to digest and probably pay attention to that FIFA announcement, on their official website in December that year, of the arrival of a new Zimbabwean football hero.

“When Zimbabwe talisman Benjamin Mwaruwari, otherwise known as Benjani, quit international football, some wondered who would be the successor,’’ FIFA said.

“However, those in the know had already predicted the new king in the form of a stocky, fast youngster named Knowledge Musona.

“Such enlarged predictions, although they carry romance and promise, can be dangerous to a youngster’s career, but Musona is aware of the work that still has to be done (for a striker) with a boyish innocence in his smile that belies a ruthlessness in front of goal for both his club, Kaizer Chiefs, and country, the Warriors of Zimbabwe.

“Musona might not have the star power of Benjani in his native land, nor the prolific scoring record of another Zimbabwe attacking legend, Peter Ndlovu, but he has a rare streak of confidence that comes with a striker hungry to make his mark, a natural, a diamond whose shine has yet to be fully found in the rough.’’

THE ROUGH DIAMOND WE PICKED AND SICKENLY UNDERVALUED

It’s a measure of our football community’s fascination with negativity that our story that Oscar Machapa had fled his base in the DRC, for security reasons, attracted more interest and hits on this newspaper’s website than the one we did, on the same day, related to the announcement of the man who will lead the Warriors when we begin the quest to qualify for the 2019 Nations Cup finals next Sunday.

As at a minute to midnight on Wednesday, the story on Machapa had generated 12 444 hits on this newspaper’s website with far more hits than Mapeza’s announcement that the next Warriors’ skipper will be named next week which had 6 893 hits.

Maybe, our fascination with negativity explains why there has been more debate on why Malajila, Katsande, Rusike and Mushekwi were omitted from the Warriors squad than Khama’s commitment to come to try and play for his country, even when chances are that he might not be fully fit for that adventure, with the forward ready to smash the pain barriers for the sake of his nation.

Or, the commitment by Musona to come and continue his love affair with the Warriors, even when some had painted a toxic landscape and suggested most of the foreign-based players were going to boycott the game against Liberia in protest over the omission of their colleagues from the squad.

That Musona even suggested he would pay for his airfare, travelling business class from Brussels to Frankfurt and then to Johannesburg and to Harare, for the sake of plunging back into the trenches of serving his nation once again, didn’t pass for an advertisement of commitment to the national cause, among many, which deserved both praise and to be told.

But, then, that is exactly us, isn’t it?

A people who will deliberately try to fish out for any negatives from Prophet Walter Magaya’s decision to extend a helping hand to the Warriors and, by extension his country, by providing the team with a luxurious base at his hotel complex, free of charge, giving them the food their chef requested which he cooks in the same hotel’s kitchen, giving them a ground for their training sessions and even a dry cleaner for their laundry.

No guests allowed to deflect the boys’ attention, as is usually the case when they camp at the various city hotels where a flood of people are either milling around in the foyer or in the corridors leading to their hotel rooms, but a proper five-star facility where it’s all about football and nothing else.

For, if we really cared for our heroes, and gave them the appreciation they deserve, maybe we could have given Musona the rock star treatment he deserves, for what he has done for his country, because — if you really look at the statistics of his adventure with the Warriors — you will find a truly wonderful story of a football artist who deserves more than what he gets in terms of appreciation.

And, as our Smiling Assassin, the boy from Norton we have watched grow into this man return home to begin another battle on the AFCON battlefields, I couldn’t help, but feel that this fellow has probably been given a raw deal by a domestic football family he has served with distinction.

Since fate has scripted that Musona’s next battle, in the colours of his country, should be against the very country that he first fought against in his Nations Cup adventure, and against whom he scored his first AFCON goal, I thought maybe the football gods are providing us with a reminder of how ungrateful a people we are.

And, against that background, I decided I might not be entirely out of place to use this occasion to not only salute him, but also highlight why he deserves more than what we have given him in terms of honouring him for how well he has led from the front when it comes to our Warriors in the past seven years.

PROBABLY ONE OF THE GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD

Just nine months after FIFA announced the arrival of Musona on the big stage, he plunged into his first AFCON assignment as a raw 21-year-old forward tasked with leading the line for his country and doing what Agent Sawu had done, for the Dream Team, or King Peter had done for this country throughout his career.

And it took just half-an-hour for Musona to announce his arrival on the big stage of the Nations Cup, as foretold by FIFA on the cyber pages of their website, as our boy wonder powered his Warriors into the lead in Monrovia on September 5, 2010, in our first 2012 AFCON qualifier against the very Liberians we will play next weekend.

By the end of those qualifiers, in which he missed the game against Liberia at home through injury, Musona had scored four goals — including a memorable double against Mali on June 5, 2011, at Rufaro in a 2-1 win for the Warriors — to complete the campaign just two goals behind Tunisia’s Issam Jemma who topped the scoring charts with six goals.

He scored in three of the four matches he played during that campaign and his absence, through a shoulder injury, in the away game in Mali — which the Warriors lost 0-1 — proved decisive.

But, for me, it’s the quality of the players who were bracketed with him on four goals in that campaign, which was special and which I feel for a raw 21-year-old, in his first AFCON qualifying campaign, should have earned him more credit than what he received in probably writing one of the greatest stories never told.

The great Samuel Eto’o, Moussa Sow, the guy you saw scoring that beauty with an overhead kick for Fenerbahce against Manchester United in the Europa Cup, Pappis Cisse, who would go on to play for Newcastle United, also had four goals in that campaign.

Also, bracketed in that group with four goals in that campaign was the great Didier Drogba who, six months later would score the equaliser and winning penalty in the UEFA Champions League for Chelsea against Bayern Munich.

To imagine that just seven years earlier Musona was a mere Form One schoolboy in Norton while Drogba was being signed by Chelsea for a club record £24 million (about US$30 million) fee, making him the most expensive Ivorian player back then, and now they were both in the same bracket, having finished the 2012 AFCON qualifying campaign with four goals each, is simply incredible.

To just imagine that Musona, in his maiden AFCON qualifying campaign, scored as many goals as Drogba who, a year later, would be named Chelsea’s greatest ever player in a poll of 20 000 fans conducted by Chelsea Magazine, and would then go on to sign a deal with Galatasaray where he got €4 million signing-on fee plus a basic wage of €4 million per season and a cool €15 000 per match, is just incredible.

To imagine that, at just 21, our boy wonder ended his first AFCON qualifying campaign with the same number of goals as an elite group of footballers who, together, have been traded for more than US$200 million in their careers, with one of them, Eto’o even earning €20 million (after taxes) per season in Russia, tells you this incredible story that was never written.

To imagine that our boy scored more goals, in that campaign, than Gervinho, Wilfried Boigny, Ikechukwu Uche, Asamoah Gyan, Andre Ayew, Demba Ba and Obafemi Martins should tell you something about this beautiful story.

Try to consider this incredible story that for FOUR years, between 2010 and May 2014, Musona was the only Warrior to score in an away World Cup/Nations Cup qualifier with all our four goals, in the nine matches we played on the road during that period, coming from the boot of the Smiling Assassin.

He scored in the 1-1 draw against Liberia in the opening 2012 AFCON qualifier in Monrovia, scored in the 1-2 defeat at the hands of Cape Verde in Praia, scored the only goal against Burundi in Bujumbura in a 2013 AFCON qualifier and the only goal in Alexandria against Egypt in a 2014 World Cup — the best performance by a Warrior on foreign territory over such a period.

Of course, being us, others will say, but we failed in those battles, of course we did, but can you blame him for the sins of a toxic ZIFA leadership that crippled the Warriors’ preparations for the decisive 2012 AFCON home qualifier against Cape Verde by smuggling in Tom Saintfiet into the coaching team and, when the Belgian was deported, somehow settling for an arrangement where both Mapeza and Madinda were named co-coaches?

We drew that game 0-0, the only point Cape Verde picked on the road away from home in those qualifiers and, if we had beaten them by more than a goal — as happened when they travelled to Mali or even Liberia — we would have ended the campaign, which we finished two points short of group winners Mali, as the group winners.

And, as if he was on a mission to prove such critics wrong, he top-scored for us as we qualified for Gabon and, without him there in our first two matches, we lacked a cutting edge and when he came in for the last game, even clearly half-fit, he showed his class with probably the best goal a Warrior has scored at the AFCON finals in the 2-4 defeat at the hands of Tunisia.

But, worry not gallant Warrior and, in the week that a prophet provided your team with a plush base to camp as in preparation for the game against Liberia, maybe a reading of Matthew 13:54, when our Lord Jesus Christ tells us about prophets and honour could provide some comfort.

“Coming to His hometown, He began teaching the people in their synagogue and they were amazed: ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?’ they asked. ‘Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t His mother’s name Mary and aren’t His brothers James, Simon and Judas? Aren’t his sisters with us? When then did this Man get all these things?’ And they took offence at Him.

“And then Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not without honour except in his own town and his own home.’ And He didn’t do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.’’

You can also cross check with Mark 6:1, which also deals with our Lord’s rejection in Nazareth, Luke 4:24 which tells us, “Truly, I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown,’’ or even John 4:44 which tells us, “Now, he Himself had testified that a prophet has no honour in his own country.’’

Welcome home Warrior, the diamond whose value we seemingly never appreciate, whose greatness will never be told here.

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rashfooooooooooooord!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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• Chat with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber or read my material in The Southern Times or on www.sportszone.co.zw. The authoritative ZBC weekly television football magazine programme, Game Plan, is back on air and you can interact with me and the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika and producer Tich “Chief” Mushangwe every Monday night at 21.45pm.

THE last time the Warriors were home on Nations Cup duty, they were given a raw deal by the Public Address announcer who somehow didn’t trigger a massive National Sports Stadium outdoor party by broadcasting the news that we had finally ended our 10-year wait to qualify for the 2017 AFCON finals.

That was exactly a year ago, June 5 to be precise, when the Warriors — after a 3-0 demolition of Malawi — were left to wonder if their victory had secured them a ticket to Gabon given they also needed Guinea to fail to beat Swaziland in Mbabane that day.

It sounds a bit crazy, in these days when news travels very fast around the world, but just five years after those haunting images have now been frozen in time, of Bafana Bafana going on an extended party of shame at the Mbombela Stadium after mistakenly believing they had qualified for the 2012 AFCON finals, caution was clearly better than humiliation.

And, in these days when fake news also flies faster than real news, the Warriors’ decision to resist the temptation of being lured into impromptu celebrations, even as some of the journalists repeatedly told them on the field about what had happened in Swaziland was probably understandable.

Of course, the reality was that the Warriors had qualified because Sihlangu had beaten Guinea 1-0, but without official confirmation, especially from the man who was in charge of the PA system, the boys and their coaches just froze on that field as if they were in a daze, pondering what fate had delivered for them.

And, as it turned out, those heroic Warriors could not party with their long-suffering fans to thank them for a loyalty to their cause, which is the stuff that is the ultimate definition of exceptional patriotism, to thank them for sticking with them through the storms that had seen this team qualify for only two Nations Cup finals in 36 years.

For the fans, themselves, to thank this generation of Warriors for refusing to be sucked into the kind of mediocrity that had come to define some of those who had worn this golden shirt in the past, including a recent past in which a decade had elapsed since this team had last booked its date for a dinner with the continent’s football aristocracy.

For their unassuming coach Callisto Pasuwa to finally show some emotions — at the end of a strenuous journey that had started with that two-in-one-blanket photograph that will remain the enduring image of a campaign blighted by strife — and soak in the adulation from his fans now that success had been achieved.

We never got the chance to party, as if we qualify for every Nations Cup finals, as if it was something we do with regularity it has become part of the DNA of our Warriors, as if we hadn’t waited for 10 years to get there.

As if this wasn’t only the THIRD time in THIRTY SIX years this had happened to us, which gives you an average of once every DOZEN years, as if this wasn’t the only time we had done it with a game to spare — as if nothing had happened when in reality, something very, very big had actually happened.

As if we were not the only Southern African nation standing tall in that wreckage of shattered dreams across a region whose representatives, including former winners Bafana Bafana and Chipolopolo, had fallen by the wayside in their quest to be in Gabon.

A tournament where not even the Super Eagles of Nigeria, remember them, of course my Game Plan colleague Charles “CNN” Mabika does after their magician Jay Jay Okocha, so good they had to name him twice, came here and mesmerised him so much that his lyrical portrayal of the great man came with a cost, had failed to secure a ticket to.

WE NEED TO STOP HATING OURSELVES FOR US TO FIND THE JOY THAT COMES WITH LOVING WHO WE ARE
Maybe, for goodness sake, let’s forgive that PA announcer who couldn’t spark an outdoor party that June afternoon.

After all, wasn’t that typical of what we have become, a football community used to a lot of negativity, blinded by years of failure, intoxicated by years of under-achievement appear allergic to the occasional success story.

It appears we have even developed a hostility towards the occasional rainbow that breaks the dark storm clouds that keep engulfing our game and when our stars shine — like on that June day last year — the light they cast on the darkness hardly appeals to us.

I have always argued that we tend to hate ourselves so much as a people and you see all that toxic hatred on social media groups that have become our fashionable sanctuary where, hiding under fake characters and pseudonyms on Facebook and Twitter we find the freedom to really pour out venom, mocking our very identity as a people, yearning for a paradise that probably never exists.

When some questionable website makes a mockery of itself by ranking our country as the poorest in Africa — an insult to many who know better — we seemingly go into a frenzy to ensure that we distribute such material to as many people as possible rather than challenge its authenticity.

And when Spanish international football star Nolito, who joined Manchester City last July on a £13.5 million move and has been getting £100 000 a week, says he wants to return home because living in Manchester has been such a nightmare his daughter Lola has been drained of all colour due to lack of sunlight, we are very quick to dismiss him as a joke.

“My daughter’s face has changed colour — it looks like she’s been living in a cave,’’ the footballer told the Spanish media this week. “I am under contract, so the club will decide, but I want to leave.”

I have no doubt, right now, there are a lot of people just waiting for something to possibly go wrong tomorrow, including some who even wish the Warriors lose their match against Liberia, for them to find justification to spread their toxic messages including, but not limited to:

l That Chiyangwa is just a joke who should not be trusted with the responsibility of leading any nation’s football community and only a sick fraternity, like ours, can allow that to happen.

l Of course, they will conveniently not talk about those football leaders in the region who saw a value in this guy to vote him as the COSAFA president and those around the continent who listened when he said it was time to bring down Hayatou.

lThat we must be a bunch of crazy zombies to even expect the Warriors will succeed in an environment where our economy is having some significant challenges, including severe cash shortages.

l Of course, they will conveniently not tell you about the Venezuela Under-20 team, who come from a country in severe turmoil reeling from worse economic challenges than ours, will tomorrow take on England in the final of the FIFA Under-20 World Cup in South Korea after, along the way, eliminating the world’s biggest economic power, United States.

l That we must be a bunch of alien creatures, like those characters of the fictional Star Wars movie franchise which has grossed more than $7.5 billion in box office receipts, to have believed the Warriors would succeed while having held their camp at a complex owned by a prophet they dismiss as not genuine.

l Of course, they will conveniently not tell you about how the same prophet played a significant role in the success of the last AFCON campaign, including personally footing the team’s trip to Malawi where victory gave the team a firm foundation to build their successful campaign, or the Mighty Warriors’ Olympic miracle.

l That there was nothing impressive about our last AFCON qualifying success story because, in their gospel, we had the luck of playing against teams they consider hopeless lightweights like Malawi and Swaziland and a Guinea side that played one of its home qualifiers on neutral soil because of the Ebola virus.

l Of course, what they will conveniently not tell you the same Guinea team, during the 2015 AFCON qualifiers, won two and drew one of the three matches they played on neutral soil in Morocco and — at the finals in Equatorial Guinea — they were just one of three teams to avoid defeat (the others being Mali and Ghana) against eventual champions Cote d’Ivoire.

l That even Khama and Costa’s injuries, which have ruled them out of tomorrow’s game, is a curse from football gods unhappy with the way their colleagues Mushekwi, Malajila, Rusike and Katsande were overlooked for the match against Liberia.

l Of course, what they will conveniently not tell you is that the same Warriors’ side that finally ended our decade-long wait for an AFCON qualifier struggled to play without Khama and fired blanks in the first half of that home qualifier against Swaziland with Billiat on the bench, only to score four after he had come on in the second half, and they lost to Guinea when he was rested.

It’s all part of this deep hatred that some of us have for our identity, this allergy we have to any feel-good story coming from this country we call home, this fierce resentment we have for any success stories to come out of it, be it football or any other sport, and the comfort and excitement they derive from any negativity that emerges.

That is why, when the Warriors went into that first game against Algeria in Gabon, all that this lot picked on was their kit, simply because it was unbranded, and that shaped the narrative of their analysis while the rest of the world concentrated on the brilliance of their performance that was pregnant with style.

And that is why they told us all the Warriors — Musona and others — would boycott the match against Liberia in protest and when these guys showed up for national duty, they decided to shift their crusade to those, in England, who had been targeted for this mission by even daring to tell them that there isn’t a hotel fit for them to stay in this country.

The good thing, though, is that the world isn’t falling for their trap of deception and it’s seeing some positives from the game in this country and the person who did the comprehensive preview for the 2019 AFCON matches this weekend on SuperSport’s weekly magazine programme, Soccer Africa, two days ago described the Warriors as a “team which has been one of the most exciting on the continent of late.’’

AT LONG LAST, WE CAN HAVE

A DELAYED OUTDOOR PARTY FOR MARVELOUS, AND AT THE SAME

TIME, LET’S SPARE A THOUGHT

FOR HIS PEOPLE

Marvelous Nakamba represents both the present and the future for the Warriors — he was the youngest player to turn out for the team in Gabon just days after turning 23 — and his phenomenal development, since then, has seen him play a very influential role in helping his club Vitesse Arnhem win the Dutch Cup, their first major trophy in their 125-year history, and qualification for next season’s Europa Cup.

He was also voted the second best performing player at the Dutch club and now English side Everton and Turkish giants Galatasaray are tracking the services of the Zimbabwean midfielder.

Musona, too, has come home after helping his Belgian side KV Oostende qualify for the Europa Cup next season and, after handling himself with distinction in the week he was named the team captain, there is even an extra reason for us to celebrate his European achievements tomorrow.

For me, tomorrow, too should be one for us to spare a thought for Nakamba’s hometown, Hwange, given that this was the week we marked the 45th anniversary of that disaster at the Colliery when underground explosions on June 6, 1972, killed 427 miners in that horror accident which is one of the worst 10 recorded mining accidents in the past 117 years.

Norman Mapeza, the man who will be guiding the Warriors tomorrow, was just a mere two-month old toddler when the Kandamana disaster struck with fire and poison gases consuming the lives of 427 people on a single day.

When you talk about Hwange, there are three things you can’t ignore — the coalfields, the abundant wildlife and, of course, football, a game that was introduced to the local community, ironically in the same Kandamana area where the accident occurred, way back in 1896 by a certain Albert Geese during the laying of the railway line between Bulawayo and Victoria Falls.

‘‘There were three loud blasts from Number Two Colliery Shaft which sent shock waves across the entire Colliery community and suddenly there was a thick and dark smoke coming from the direction of the blast,’’ one of the community’s football stars of that era, Twyman “Ghost of Chibuku’’ Chibuku, who was a teenager back then, painfully recalled four years ago.

‘’Residents were terrified as they battled to come to terms with what actually could have happened that day. I knew it was disaster as people rushed towards Number Two Colliery.’’

And football would provide the stage for the stricken community to gather, for a memorial service for the victims held just days after the disaster, with 5 000 people gathering in the stadium at the Colliery that Chipangano call their home.

“Among those who died in the disaster was one Masauso Zulu, a brilliant footballer who had played with the likes of Daniel Rendo, Michael Lungu, Daniel Tembo, John ‘‘Seven Days’’ Banda, Cyprian Ngoma, Jerry Mzondwa and Mwape Sakala in a star-studded Hwange Football Club team which was on top of its game,’’ said Ncube.

“Another brilliant player whose career was on the rise — Obert Agayi’s father — also perished in the disaster. Agayi had to go back to Zambia with his mother and siblings and he was never heard of again.

“I remember one Masauso Zulu who was a soccer legend in the Colliery community. He was a very brilliant player who could do anything with the ball. Death robbed us of a footballer par-excellence who had a bright future ahead of him.

‘‘Death is inevitable, but the way it visited us that day on 6 June left emotional scars which are still with us today.’’

Football, somehow, would also provide some consolation for this tormented community, a year after that disaster, when they beat Dynamos 7-6 on penalties in a replayed 1973 Castle Cup final after the match had ended 3-3 with Ncube scoring a double for the coalminers and also converting the first penalty in the shootout for the miners.

But what really makes us such a special people is the way we somehow always defiantly find a way to refuse to be buried by tragedy and, from that stricken community which on Tuesday marked the 45th anniversary of the day when fate dealt them such a brutal blow, a Warrior who will fly his country’s flag tomorrow, was born.

It’s that spirit of defiance that should always provide the strength for us to defy the odds, a people who simply refuse to fall, and if the Ghost of Chibuku and his teammates could rise from their tragedy to win the Castle Cup the following year, surely, no assignment can be deemed too tough for these Warriors.

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Come on Warriors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Khamaldinhoooooooooooooooooo!

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•Chat with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber or read my material in The Southern Times or on www.sportszone.co.zw. The authoritative ZBC weekly television football magazine programme, Game Plan, is back on air and you can interact with me and the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika and producer Tich “Chief” Mushangwe every Monday night at 21.45pm.

SHARUKO ON SATURDAY
ONE of my enduring passion has always been reading, a love affair that probably was started by my late father, back in the days he used to spend hours teaching me how to read and write before I had even enrolled for my first grade.

I read a lot of material, even ranking the quality or lack of it, the way the writers introduce their subject, develop their stories and then provide a guided tour to the conclusion.

Writing is an art and, in its purity, just like vintage single malt Scotch whisky, is simply irresistible and whether or not you agree with what you would be reading certainly becomes irrelevant as you are consumed by the quality of the material.

For years, I just could not find a better introduction to the way Charles Dickens welcomes his readers to his classic novel Great Expectations when Philip Pirrip, the central figure in the story, tells us — “My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.” That is, until, on New Year’s Day, 2013, when British journalist Mike Selvey penned a classic obituary of legendary cricket writer and broadcaster Christopher Martin-Jenkins, notorious for being late in just about everything he did in his life.

“The late Christopher Martin-Jenkins, we always said it had a pertinent ring to it, because generally that is what he was, and now he really is,’’ wrote Selvey in The Guardian newspaper in a classic spin of the word ‘late’.

Or that guy who came up with the classic headline — APRIL GAMBLE COSTS MAY IN JUNE — to capture how British Prime Minister Theresa May’s gamble, in April, to call a snap election she thought her party would win only for them to suffer a huge embarrassment at the polls in June.

My enduring passion for reading, this week, sent me scavenging on reports around the world because I knew that, given the number of significant issues in the past seven days, there was a lot of content to provide both company and analysis.

After all, Bafana Bafana had, for the FIRST time in a competitive game, beaten the Super Eagles, Zambia had for the FIRST time since 1968, crashed to defeat in an AFCON game in their Ndola fortress, beaten by a Mozambique side which had never beaten Chipolopolo in 20 international matches.

And, for the FIRST time in our history, we had been finally been afforded the privilege to be proud witnesses of a Warriors’ captain scoring a hat-trick in a Nations Cup match.

A huge story also exploded around the world when the Spanish prosecutor announced that football’s biggest superstar and ultimate poster boy, Cristiano Ronaldo, was being charged in a tax fraud case involving more than $16,5 million.

Inevitably, the announcement triggered a tsunami in world football given Ronaldo’s huge profile.

It’s a road we have travelled before, with Ronaldo’s only rival for the tag of the world’s best footballer, Lionel Messi, last month losing an appeal to have his 21-day prison sentence, for tax fraud, being dismissed by the Spanish Supreme Court.

Of course, Messi won’t serve jail because he is a first offender and in Spain that comes with some privileges, but given his status as high-flying sportsman who has a lot of endorsements from companies, to have the record of convicted fraudster in his profile is an unwelcome stain.

Because, this means Messi will now always be classified among a group of tax cheats whose membership include infamous Chicago gangster Al Capone.

What made Ronaldo’s case shake the world, in a way Messi’s case probably didn’t, was the huge amount involved in the Portuguese captain’s fraud case, a staggering $16,5 million, more than four times the value of what the Argentina skipper was found guilty of defrauding tax authorities.

SCAVENGING THROUGH THE MADRID MEDIA PROVIDES A LOT OF INSIGHT

The biggest daily newspaper in Spain is Marca, a sports paper which next year will celebrate its 80th anniversary and has a loyal readership of more than 2,5 million everyday — the highest in that country by a considerable distance.

Last year, Marca was ranked the most influential sports newspaper in the world.

This week, driven by my fiery reading passion, I scavenged the Madrid media, and that means reading a lot of Marca, a lot of AS, a lot of El Pais, trying to find out how they reacted to Ronaldo being charged for tax fraud.

I picked out that, all the editors of the Madrid newspapers, including Marca, chose to downplay the Ronaldo fraud story throughout the week and, significantly, on the occasions they featured him on their front pages, in relation to story, his pictures were not in the colours of Real Madrid, but of Portugal.

Not once, in all the Madrid newspapers, did I see a picture of Ronaldo, in the story related to that fraud case, in a Real Madrid jersey as if the editors were united, in their decision-making, that they couldn’t link the iconic jersey of their European and world champions — a source of huge pride in that city and country — to a fraud case.

To them, players — even someone as iconic as Cristiano Ronaldo — come and go, but Real Madrid will always be there. To them, this massive club was there even before the original Ronaldo, that boy from Brazil, and it survived his departure the same way it survived the departure of an even bigger star called Alfredo di Stefano.

And, therefore, even though journalism dictates they have to run a damaging story about Cristiano’s ugly flirtation with accusations of being a tax cheat or tax fraudster, whatever suits you, they carry a responsibility to try and ensure they minimise, as much as possible, the corrosive damage this could have on the brand Real Madrid.

And, scavenging through the Madrid media, I also found out I wasn’t the only one who noticed this with Spanish journalist Lluis Mascaro also noting this in a report he did for the Sport newspaper on Wednesday in which he notes that “all the major (Madrid) newspapers show Ronaldo in Portugal colours.’’

He also notes, in the same report, that “El Pais (another Madrid newspaper) features the Ronaldo story in a smaller section, while on page 33, Ronaldo appears in Portugal training gear.

“El Mundo features Ronaldo in a reduced space on the cover, once again in Portugal training wear, as for ABC, the ‘Ronaldo Case’ doesn’t even make the cover (but) inside two pages, yes, dressed in Portugal’s kit once again (while) in La Razon, Ronaldo’s tax evasion case is also omitted from the cover.’’

Sid Lowe, probably the best English journalist covering Spanish football, also picked it up and put the case on his Twitter page on Wednesday.

JOURNALISM CARRIES A WEIGHT OF RESPONSIBILITY, IN MADRID AS MUCH AS IN HARARE

Yes, we might try to crawl into denial and say this and that, argue this and that, spend days, weeks, months or even years discussing this and that, but the brutal truth is that mainstream journalism carries a weight of responsibility, in Madrid as much as it does in Harare.

That responsibility includes being guided by national interest, with sports journalism in this country always fronting the interests of such national institutions like the Warriors, the Young Warriors, the Mighty Warriors, the Chevrons, you name them. And, in an era where social media has created a platform where the reader can be bombarded with anything and everything, including what Donald Trump calls fake news, the onus on the mainstream media to publish the real news has never been any greater, any tougher.

On the interactive forum of African football journalists and administrators this week, one of our foreign colleagues posted a picture of Kuda Mahachi and Marvelous Nakamba warming up at the National Sports Stadium in a Joma kit, asking us, the Zimbabwean journalists on the forum, to explain why this was the case when the Warriors were being kitted by Mafro.

At least, he asked, and I explained that the image wasn’t taken on Sunday, but was from way back. But what was depressing about this is that it was clear he had picked this conversation from other forums across Africa where this picture had long been accepted as another example of the rampant confusion pregnant in Zimbabwean football.

The real news that we had thrashed Liberia 3-0 and Knowledge Musona was the leading 2019 AFCON qualifying goal-scorer probably didn’t interest them because, as far as they are concerned, we aren’t a nation that should provide such feel-good stories, but one that should always be trapped in a pool of negativity.

The real news that we could sit on top of a group that has the DRC, even after the first round of fixtures, was something they were either finding hard to believe or desperate to replace with a negative spin of an old image of Mahachi and Nakamba in a kit our boys no longer use just to feed their conspiracy that nothing positive happens here.

Then, just after I had clarified the fake news about the kit, another one said he couldn’t understand all the buzz about the Warriors because, in his argument, they had terribly struggled to score at the 2017 Nations Cup finals in Gabon.

And, once again, I had to provide the explanation our boys scored four goals in their three matches in Gabon, more goals than eventual champions Cameroon (3) scored in Group A, double the number of goals Gabon, scored, double the number of goals Cote d’Ivoire scored, double the number Adebayor’s Togo scored, double the number eventual losing finalists Egypt scored in their group and double the number Ghana scored in their group.

That we outscored the entire Group D that had Egypt, Ghana, Mali and Uganda, no Group A team outscored us and only Senegal (six), Tunisia (six), DRC (six) and Algeria (five) — just four out of 16 teams — scored more group goals than us in Gabon.

But, can we really blame these foreigners, who always see gloom when it comes to us, when we appear to be the experts in rubbishing our team and, by extension our country, by being fascinated with only negativity, including some that might not have any foundation at all?

When we find ourselves in an era where we either all have to sing the song that some people want to listen to, for their reasons, or we risk the danger of being labelled either bastards or, if they choose to be less brutal in their condemnation, they say were are a poor clone of singer Jah Jecha and his group Orchestra Mapisi Endege.

When we all have to move in their pack, in the same direction and in the event you choose otherwise you are described as hopeless, useless, reckless, brainless, directionless, visionless, an individual who is an insult to what they claim, or rather believe, should define journalism. You even have to believe in their religion, prophets, pastors, deacons, bishops, in their beliefs because believing in someone they don’t like is the closest thing to being a disciple of the Satanic Verses or you have been paid to believe in a different manner.

MADRID MEDIA’S TREATMENT OF RONALDO AND OUR SAVAGE TREATMENT OF MUSONA

If you doubt there is a huge difference in how journalism elsewhere carries a weight of responsibility while ours appears a carefree demonisation weapon of our sporting icons, or those who try to play a part in the realisation of these sportsmen’s dreams, then just try to compare the Madrid’s media reaction to Ronaldo’s multi-million dollar tax evasion charge and the hysterical way we responded to reports Musona had placed bets on matches in Belgium last year?

In just a flash we, the local media, rushed to pass judgment on the Smiling Assassin, including, but not limited to the use of sickening language so brutal you would think he wasn’t one of us, with some pronouncing lengthy bans on him while others even said this was the beginning of the end of his career.

Some of us quickly fed our readers with false stories Musona had placed bets on matches he was playing, including wild claims he had bet he would miss penalties in matches he knew he was the penalty-taker for his Belgian club and which he could manipulate by easily shooting off target.

“What has been reported so far — Musona named as one of five or six players in the gambling scandal, Musona admitted to betting on matches he was involved in,’’ screamed on local media outlet.

While his club backed him, we transformed ourselves into the prosecution and, even worse, the judges who pronounced the guilty verdict at a time when our golden boy, just like Cristiano Ronaldo today, needed the support of his home media in a case his so-called crime had not been proved.

And now, without any apparent shame at all, we take the lead in saluting him as a superman, the first Warrior to score an AFCON hat-trick, without even reminding our readers that this was the very man whom — just nine months ago — we were telling you his career was over because he was going to face a lengthy FIFA ban.

What a privileged people we are, those who will have their cake and eat it, vomit it, and try and make it again in exactly the shape and taste that it was before our voracious appetite took over our senses, always the judges and never the judged.

Lucky you Cristiano Ronaldo, just imagine if you were Musona?

Of course, the world moves on, with or without our hatred disguised as journalism and Pakistan are in the final of the ICC Champions Trophy tomorrow against India, thanks to the exploits of a fast bowler Mohamed Amir who served a six-month prison sentence in England — just six years ago — for spot-fixing.

Imagine if Amir was Musona?

Can you believe Zambia have won only one of their last seven AFCON games (1-1 against Kenya; 2-3 loss to Guinea Bissau; 1-1 against Congo-Brazzaville; 1-1 against Congo-Brazzaville; 2-1 win over Kenya; 0-0 against Guinea Bissau and a 0-1 loss to Mozambique)?

Can you believe South Africa have only won two of their last seven AFCON games (0-0 against Gambia; 1-3 loss to Mauritania; 2-2 against Cameroon; 0-0 against Cameroon; 4-0 win over Gambia; 1-1 against Mauritania and a 2-0 win over Nigeria)?

Imagine if they were the Warriors?

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Come on Warriors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Khamaldinhooooooooooooooooo!

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Sharuko On Saturday
EXACTLY 50 years ago, on May 25, 1967, Scottish giants Celtic made history when they became the first British club to be crowned champions of Europe after beating Italian powerhouse Inter Milan 2-1 in the final in Lisbon.

The heroes of that campaign, dubbed the Lisbon Lions, provided their city Glasgow, in general, and their club Celtic, in particular, with a truly home-made success story as all, but one of the triumphant 15-member squad were born within a 16-km radius of the club’s home ground Celtic Park.

Only Bobby Lennox, in that squad, was the odd one out, having been born 48kms away from Celtic Park, but like all his teammates, he was from Glasgow and proudly Scottish.

The following year, 1968, Manchester United became the second British club to be crowned champions of Europe and in 1970, to show that their ’68 adventure was no fluke, Celtic qualified for their second European Cup final — in three years — only to lose 1-2 to Dutch side Feyenoord.

Last season, Celtic joined an elite club of Invincibles, the immortals who have completed a 38-game championship season without defeat — Juventus in Italy’s Serie A (2011-2012); Arsenal in the English Premiership (2003/2004) and Barry Town in the League of Wales (1997-1998).

Incredibly, Celtic scored in every league game they played last season, at an average of 2.7 goals a game, and powered to the championship — their sixth league title in a row — with a 30-point difference from the chasing pack and secured the title with eight games to spare.

It’s a measure of Celtic’s greatness that, even though they haven’t been beneficiaries of the crazy money that has changed English football since the dawn of the Premiership, the Scottish giants were last year ranked the ninth biggest British football club.

Only Newcastle (eighth), Everton (seventh), Tottenham Hotspur (sixth), Manchester City (fifth), Chelsea (fourth), Liverpool (third), Arsenal (second) and Manchester United (first) were ranked bigger than Celtic.

This is the giant club that our highly-rated teenage footballer, Kundai Benyu, joined two days ago when he signed a four-year deal, choosing to work with former Liverpool boss, Brendan Rodgers, despite huge interest from a number of English Premiership sides.

Celtics’ biggest rivals are just across town in Glasgow, Rangers, whose fans will certainly tell you all these rankings suggesting their rivals are now not only the biggest club in Scotland, but also one of the 10 biggest clubs in Britain, are just a whole load of nonsense and should never be taken seriously.

They will tell you they have won more league titles (54) than Celtic (48) with their 54 domestic championships being recognised as a world record for professional football clubs around the globe.

They will tell you they have won more Scottish Cups/League Cups (54) than Celtic (53) and their 118 trophies, when you include the number of times they have also won the league, is officially recognised as a world record for a professional football club on the globe.

The Rangers folks brag about the 143 570 people who watched their Scottish Cup match against Hibernian on March 27, 1948, and the Celtic folks will tell you about the 147 365 who crammed into Hampden Park to watch their Scottish Cup final against Aberdeen in 1937.

The Rangers fans will tell you it’s not a coincidence that their club holds the British record for the biggest home crowd to watch a league match when 118 567 turned up for their Old Firm Derby against Celtic on January 2, 1932 and the world record 50 048 fans who turned up for their league match, in Division Four, against Berwick Rangers on May 4, 2013.

With Rangers’ kit being predominantly blue and Celtic kit being predominantly green-and-white, you can probably see a touch of the inter-city rivalry, which plays out in Harare between Dynamos and CAPS United, in the two Glasgow giants’ endless battle for supremacy and the bragging rights that follow success.

Of course, DeMbare are bigger than CAPS United, whatever one choose to consider as criteria to rank greatness — from the success that has come with their ruthless dominance of the domestic Premiership, the massive support base, which the Glamour Boys have, right to their success on the continent.

But only an eternally drunk chap will tell you that CAPS United, for a club their size, haven’t given their bigger rivals a tough challenge, a tough battle that is a credit to this Green Machine’s incredible fighting spirit, including handing them a seven-goal humiliation that remains a stain on these Glamour Boys’ profile which the passage of time has failed to remove and might never remove.

A ZIM GEM MAKES HIS MOVE . . .

WHAT A MOVE . . . Scottish champions Celtic, ranked as one of the top 10 biggest football clubs in Britain, prepared this flyer to welcome their new acquisition, highly-rated teenage Zimbabwean midfielder Kundai Benyu, who penned a four-year-deal

You have to give it to successive generations of Makepekepe players for the good fight they have put in which, even though — unlike Sir Alex Ferguson’s successful mission against Liverpool it has so far failed to knock these Glamour Boys off their f***ing perch — it has ensured Harare hasn’t been reduced to a boring town dominated by a ruthless bull where derbies are not part of its football culture.

The next time you hear the DeMbare fans saying “nyikayeseirikufara,’’ or see the hashtag #nyikayeseirikufara trending on social media, as was the case on Tuesday after CAPS United crashed to a shock 0-2 defeat at the hands of Yadah Stars, consider it not only as their joy of seeing their rivals fall, but also as a unique way of expressing their relief that a team they consider real rivals to them for the title has fallen.

It’s a compliment, in its unique way, if you really take time to look at it.

WHEN OUR FATHER ZIMBABWE

WAS DRAWN INTO ALL THIS

FOOTBALL DRAMA

When our colleagues at the Sunday News in Bulawayo this week chose to run a story on their front page under the headline, ‘NKOMO LOVED DEMBARE’, after an exclusive interview two of their reporters, Mkhululi Sibanda and Tinomuda Chakanyuka, had with Father Zimbabwe’s former top security aide, it sent the hashtag #nyikayeseirikufara exploding on cyberspace.

“The late Vice-President Dr Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo was an avid Dynamos Football Club supporter who would always demand to be kept posted on the team’s fixtures, results and log standings, his former top security aide has revealed,’’ the Sunday News said on their front page.

“In an exclusive interview with the Sunday News, Dr Nkomo’s former head of security Nehemiah Nyathi said Dynamos occupied a special spot in Father Zimbabwe’s heart. Nyathi served as part of Dr Nkomo’s security team from May 1980 until 1 July 1999 when the VP passed on.

“He didn’t love football that much, but I wouldn’t say he hated the sport as well. What I know is that his favourite team was Dynamos. He would always ask us to keep him posted on Dynamos fixtures and results. It was part of our duty to keep him updated.

“’Of course he loved Highlanders but not as much as he did Dynamos. He (Dr Nkomo) knew that most of us were Highlanders supporters and when Highlanders was playing at Barbourfields and Dynamos was playing elsewhere he would say, ‘Asambeni eBF, manje iDynamos ke kuzwakalani madoda, kumi njani?’ (Let’s go to BF, but what is happening with Dynamos).

“’He would watch Highlanders just for fun, but the team he really loved was Dynamos. Even until his last days, he would always keep tabs on Dynamos,” said Nyathi.

Wow!

That Sunday News story, as expected, has drawn considerable interest around the world and also generated a lot of feedback with sports journalist Ezra “Tshisa” Sibanda leading the way.

“Father Zimbabwe Joshua Nkomo was a die-hard Bosso fan. It’s unbelievable his ex-security aide has the guts to lie, maybe seeking relevance,’’ Ezra responded this week.

“Joshua Nkomo, whom I had the privilege of spending time with during my four-hour interview, narrated the history of the club. He talked a lot about missing some Bosso games because Highlanders lost games whenever he was there and laughed saying ‘bathi ngisinda iteam.’

“Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo was a nationalist and supported Highlanders FC period.’’

Ezra wasn’t the only one who responded, strongly questioning the claims that Father Zimbabwe was a Dynamos fan, and saying the late Vice President was a Bosso die-hard supporter.

The Joshua Nkomo Foundation chief executive Jabulani Hadebe also issued a statement suggesting Nyathi was probably wrong to claim Father Zimbabwe was a Dynamos fan.

“Nkomo was a staunch supporter of Highlanders, a life member and its patron. Being part of the Bosso family was not only by choice but his birth right, cultural identity and heritage,’’ Hadebe said in a statement.

As is usually the case, when it comes to issues between Highlanders and Dynamos, the arguments tend to be stripped of dignity, by some people, who plunge into the narrative to push a certain toxic tribal agenda for one reason or the other.

To their credit both Ezra and Hadebe chose not to be lured into that web, pregnant with insults, which I have read in a number of other responses, including some so horrible they can’t even be printed in a family newspaper like this one.

The vicious cyber tribal war triggered by that Sunday News article is not only unnecessary but is certainly another indictment of what we are as a people who can’t argue without turning toxic.

For me, what is important here isn’t about whether Nyathi or Ezra is right or wrong or whether Father Zimbabwe supported Dynamos or Highlanders because, as a person, he had a right to back whatever team he liked and it’s a choice I have to respect.

But, what I have picked as key, from all this, is that in both versions the late great statesman provided a template of what a true football fan should be like where supporting one giant shouldn’t necessarily translate into such deep-rooted hatred of its biggest rival to such an extent that when they battle on the field one can lose his or her senses.

Clearly, from all the versions of what I have read, what comes very clear is that Father Zimbabwe, as much as he had this enduring love for one of the two giants, it didn’t transcend into a deep hatred of the other, built along tribal or related lines, to an extent some people even lose their morals and throw missiles when one of the two teams lose.

What comes out of it all, which is what matters to me, is that there was a certain level of respect to the other giant, from Father Zimbabwe himself, and as to which is the giant he loved and which is the other he respected, even if they might have represented the ultimate rivals, depends on which side one believes or is prepared to believe.

For all the drama that has been provoked by that Sunday News article, for me, the real value of it appears to have been lost in the madness that we have allowed to keep us apart, using football as a means of providing the weapon to show our hatred of each other instead of using it as a sport that can bind us together even if our choices of teams are different and the teams we love are huge rivals.

There are huge lessons we can all pick from Father Zimbabwe and that is what matters.

THAT’S THE WAY IT IS BECAUSE I’VE ALSO BEEN DRAGGED INTO IT

One of the enduring accusations that has stubbornly refused to be washed away by the passage of time, in a quarter-of-a-century of my service to this newspaper, is that I am a member of this football cult Memory Mucherahowa calls ‘Seven Million Souls’ in his explosive autobiography.

Repeated efforts, pregnant with both spirit and meaning, to argue that unlike John Mokwetsi, Barry Manandi, Tendai Ndemera and my namesake Robson Mhandu, I’m not a Dynamos fan, have dismally failed to provide the dilution to these accusations.

Incredibly, even my late lovely daughter, of all people, repeatedly fuelled this tale that I supported the football club of her dreams, the one she fell in love with as a little girl and which would be a big part of her life in this garden of the living.

And when I challenged her why she was associating me with her team, when she didn’t have any shred of evidence to buttress her claims, she would respond that either her schoolmates were saying so or she had grown up hearing this being said, again and again, by strangers on the bus on her way home from school.

It’s a belief she took with her to heaven, my pretty little DeMbare-and-Chelsea-supporting girl whom the angels took away from me to grace their lovely garden, this month last year, on the darkest Friday I have ever known in my life.

The one whose spiritual company the passage of time — 12 months to be precise — and the changing seasons, with all the different challenges that come with them, have failed to take away from me.

The one who, no matter where she is right now in that heavenly garden, whether it’s a quarter-mile away or halfway around the world, will always be with me, the one whom a part of me has always carried wherever I have gone and whom a part of me will always stay with her wherever she is.

I realised, at around the turn of the millennium, that the more I tried to argue with those who claimed I was part of DeMbare’s big family, the more I was fighting a battle I would never win because, maybe, some battles in this world are probably never meant to be won.

How I have always wished I could walk in Mike Madoda’s shoes, whose declaration that he is a Bosso fan was not only warmly accepted by our deeply-divided football community but, crucially, didn’t trigger a tsunami of opposition within the game’s constituency.

And how I have also longed for our football fraternity to accept my repeated announcements that only one local top-flight club, the Blackpool side that shook the domestic Premiership in the ‘90s, has come close to seducing me into their corner by providing the attraction which I used to get from my hometown club Falcon Gold.

In an era where my old stable mate, the brilliant Nathaniel Manheru, could finally dump the wig of disguise that used to shield him from his true identity and reveal the man behind the greatest national political blog this country has ever seen, and might never see, how I long for the same acceptance when I tell people, now and again, that I am not a member of the DeMbare constituency.

Of course, it doesn’t mean I am blinded to the romance of being a Dynamos fan – the bragging rights that come with being part of these Glamour Boys, a life generally lived in a blaze of glory, trophies, championships, success on the continent, including being the only local club to reach the final of the CAF Champions League, which all make the occasional barren spell nothing to write home about for these lucky guys in the big tent.

A life lived in a beautiful lane graced by legends like George Shaya, Freddie Mkwesha, Ernest Kamba, Sunday Chidzambwa, Daniel “Dhidhidhi” Ncube, David Mandigora, Japhet Mparutsa, Moses Chunga, Vitalis Takawira, Kenneth Jere, so good they even nicknamed him Computer, Tauya Murewa, so fast they even said he could fly, to name but just a few of the superstars who have been part of their big tent.

But, isn’t the enduring beauty of this game found in the mystery that we can’t all be supporters of one football club, that success alone — as much as we all yearn for it and as much as it remains the benchmark for greatness in this sport — can’t be the sole reason why people support teams and that’s why no one has ever accused Charles Mabika of being a madman for finding romance in supporting Middlesbrough?

However, what I have repeatedly told a lot of people, though, is that I can bet my last dollar that, when I finally leave this seat on this newspaper one day, those will come after me are unlikely to last even three months in this job if they try to test the power of Dynamos, as a massive institution, and pretend as if it just another ordinary local football club.

Maybe, I was privileged to have learnt from the very best, from someone who understood what this massive football institution means to the business of this newspaper, my former Sports Editor Jahoor Omar who, in the days of my apprenticeship would send a photographer into the city just to capture a picture of Moses Chunga back in the days when the Razorman was the ultimate symbol of these Glamour Boys.

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Come on Warriors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Khamaldinhoooooooooooooo!

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Chat with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber or read my material in The Southern Times or on www.sportszone.co.zw. The authoritative ZBC weekly television football magazine programme, Game Plan, is back on air and you can interact with me and the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika and producer Tich “Chief” Mushangwe every Monday night at 21.45pm.

Sharuko on Saturday
THE cover photo on Ovidy Karuru’s Facebook page isn’t about him being presented with one of the numerous man-of-the-match awards he has won at the 2017 COSAFA Castle Cup where his Warriors’ second coming has been as explosive as it has been very, very beautiful.

Neither is it an image plucked from the five years he spent in French football, where he played for two clubs, after arriving in Europe in 2009 as a fresh-faced footballer who had just waved goodbye to the innocence of his teenage adventure.

It’s not even an image from the time he spent at English Premiership side Newcastle United on the previous year where he had the chance to be up-close-and-personal with illustrious company that included the likes of Michael Owen, Obafemi Martins, Kevin Nolan, Joey Barton, James Milner and Fraser Foster.

Neither is it an image from his other time as the star of the Warriors, being mobbed by scores of delirious fans and getting a standing ovation from a Rufaro packed to capacity after a starring show against Mali in a 2012 Nations Cup qualifier, including a late burst into the West Africans’ penalty area, in time added on, to win a penalty that Knowledge Musona converted for the winner.

Instead Ovidy’s Facebook cover photo is one he uploaded on July 20, 2014, an image captured as he trooped off the field at the National Sports Stadium a month earlier, with both his hands behind the back of his head, a part of his Warriors jersey in his mouth, the disappointment written all over his face a public advertisement of the turmoil that was tormenting his soul.

To his left is a well-built man, probably a security aide, providing a hand of support as if to steady this broken footballer, as if to help him stay on his feet, as if to help him walk away from this field of shattered dreams, from the darkness of this nightmare that had cast its spell all over the place the Warriors call their home, their fortress.

In the background, there is a group of photographers, all of them with their cameras hanging from their hands, their gloomy faces betraying the pain they, too, are feeling as they troop off the pitch, every face telling its unique story of the emotions that were exploding in their souls that afternoon.

That just three years earlier, most of those photographers, who now appeared as if they were ignoring Karuru as he trooped off the field, had jostled to just try and get the best possible shot of the midfielder as he was being mobbed by scores of fans thrilled by his vintage show against Mali on that June 5, 2011 afternoon at Rufaro, spoke volumes.

And in their collective silence this time around, as clearly depicted in that iconic image that Karuru has chosen as his Facebook page cover photo, the photographers were saying it best by simply saying nothing at all.

For Karuru, that’s the grim image, taken on June 1, 2014, just after the Warriors crashed out of the preliminary round of the 2015 AFCON finals following a 2-2 home draw against Tanzania that was at best an insult to their pedigree and at worst an aberration, which he has chosen, in the last three years, to be the cover photo of his Facebook page.

For it to provide him with a timeless reminder that nothing can be taken for granted in this game which recently had paraded its full brutality for him as he spectacularly plunged from being a golden Warrior to one whose glitter had apparently faded and whose time, it appeared, had passed. A timeless reminder of the brutality of a game that can give so much, and take away so much very quickly, and the enduring pain it can inflict on guys like him in times when they fail to live up to the expectations of a people, a nation, which would have invested so much of its trust on them to succeed on the football field.

A timeless reminder of a place and time he doesn’t want to go back to, if given another chance to represent his country in this game, as if to tell us that I was there, experienced all that pain when it all exploded in our face and, just like you, was tormented by the events of that afternoon and it’s not something I want be involved in again as long as I can play this game.

A PICTURE TELLS A THOUSAND WORDS . . .

FEEL IT, IT’S PAINFUL . . . The image which Ovidy Karuru has used as his Facebook cover photo to remind him about the pain that comes with failure when playing for the Warriors and also inspire him to try and ensure he won’t suffer like that again

As if he has been yearning, all along, for a comeback to make up for that mess, a still image pregnant with meaning, full of melody, producing a sound and the more you look at that image the more it appears to sing to us.

Like it’s some cover version of the late great American singer Luther Vandross in his classic hit song “Dance With My Father,” and appears to be saying, “if I could get another chance, another walk, another dance with the Warriors, my feet would play a song that would never, ever end, how I would love to dance with my Warriors again.”

And, that cry for another dance, another chance, was first given to him last month by a coach, Norman Mapeza, under whose tutelage he has bloomed the brightest in the Warriors colours with Karuru’s 88th minute introduction in that 2019 AFCON qualifier against Liberia sparking an explosion of love from the fans at the National Sports Stadium.

A COMEBACK CERTAINLY MADE IN HEAVEN

Fittingly, it had to be Sunday Chidzambwa, the coach who gave him his first extended dance with the Warriors back in 2009 at the inaugural CHAN final, who had to give him another extended run in the colours of his country at this COSAFA Castle Cup. Sport is loaded with a number of stunning comebacks by athletes, who have risen from the depths of despair to take their place back at the top, none better than Michael Jordan who, tormented by the loss of his murdered father, walked away from basketball in 1993 when he was the NBA’s ultimate superstar.

Of course, I’m not suggesting Karuru comes anywhere near MJ, who in my little book was probably not only the greatest basketballer of all-time, but maybe, the finest sportsman the world has ever seen.

But such is the beauty of sport it presents us with room for imagination — no matter how ridiculous this might appear — and didn’t the Zambians even file a complaint with FIFA that it was wrong to claim Messi had scored the most number of goals in a calendar when their own Godfrey “Ucar” Chitalu had scored more even when the levels of competitions were clearly as different as day and night?

And, watching Ovidy Karuru explode, the way he has done at a COSAFA tournament where his magic has provided not only the illumination, but cast a spell over everyone else, has been quite a refreshing experience for someone like me who always believed this guy is a very good footballer.

Since watching him play at his first major tournament for the Warriors at the 2009 CHAN tournament in Côte d’Ivoire, just a month after his 20th birthday, I got this feeling I had just seen someone who would play an influential role for our national team.

That he was quickly whisked away to France, just after that tourney, didn’t surprise me because I was certain there was something special about this fresh-faced footballer with a cultured touch, superb movement, fine vision and, crucially, the ability to score goals.

Neither was I surprised to see him coming back home to play that starring role for the Warriors in that 2012 AFCON qualifying campaign in which we would have grabbed a ticket to the finals had it not been for the madness of a ZIFA leadership that sabotaged it with an ill-advised decision to try and impose Tom Saintfiet into the coaching structures.

Of course, somewhere along the line, Karuru lost his way and his decision to abandon a European adventure, lured by the comforts of the fast life of Johannesburg, the good company of a number of his Warriors teammates, fine climatic conditions where the sun shone most of the year and the convenience of being just a one-and-half flight from home was as ill-advised as it was destructive.

It stalled his progress and, inevitably, damaged his confidence, playing in an obscure league where putting the ball through the legs of an opponent is considered a highlight that will get repeated showing on SuperSport 4 and SuperSport Blitz, where shibobo and all that stuff is given more value than the purity of positional discipline and the religious importance of maintaining great fitness levels.

A league where Zambian forward Collins Mbesuma could become its superstar while being clearly overweight, part of it the result of days spent downing beers without anyone telling him he had to fight to remain in an athletic shape, with his weight issues — more than anything — destroying his dream move to Portsmouth. Someone who had scored 35 goals for Kaizer Chiefs and won the South African Footballer of the Season award could only make just four substitute appearances at Portsmouth before the club, which had first given him a three-year contract, dumped him.

“Let’s be honest, we’ve made some cock-ups,” Peter Storrie, who was the then Portsmouth chief executive, conceded.

“We’ve bought some good players, but we’ve also bought some bad ones. Laurent Robert, Kostas Chailkias, Collins Mbesuma and Zvonimir Vukic were all bad buys.

“Collins, for instance, is a nice lad, but he’s not right for this level. The leap from South African football was too great.”

THANKS OVIDY FOR PROVING WE WEREN’T MAD TO KEEP BELIEVING IN YOU

For some of us, watching Karuru make the best of his second chance with the Warriors, has been quite a spectacle.

He has answered those who questioned his fitness levels, running more kilometres at this tournament than any other player.

He has answered those who questioned whether he was still good enough to play at a high level, the deft touches to control the ball, deceptive body swerves and that ability to not only provide supplementary personnel in the box for the team’s attack, but crucially, to score some cracking goals, speaking volumes about his qualities.

Don’t tell me that the opposition has been poor because when you volley home a beauty like the one that Karuru scored against Swaziland, who had some players who beat Guinea home and away in the last AFCON qualifiers, the opposition doesn’t matter in the final analysis.

It’s the player’s ability to complete the execution of such a lovely goal, with all the high degree of difficulty that such a play has, which is what matters and illustrates the difference between the good ones and the average ones.

When Cristiano Ronaldo stays behind after the Real Madrid practice session to perfect free-kicks, there won’t be any quality opposition to provide a wall that he must beat to get his angles right and score.

They even use dummies that don’t move and what matters, for Cristiano is not what the opposition will do, but how he is perfecting the art of finding the angles he wants from those dead balls.

It’s refreshing to see this diamond, whose sparkle had faded in a mist of the doubts that had started to creep into his mind about whether he was truly good enough, getting his confidence back.

I know there will be bricks thrown towards me, lots of them, from critics who will tell you again and again, there goes this madman, scavenging for light in an irrelevant football tournament where other countries, notably South Africa, don’t even send their home-based players to compete there.

Of course, I understand that and I respect their arguments that it is wrong to use a tournament like COSAFA to judge a player like Karuru given at this tournament he is playing against virtually amateurs and, in such a scenario, his performance ends up being magnified not because he is that good, but because the opponents are that poor.

A football version of a one-eyed man, cast among the blind, who suddenly becomes the king of the kraal.

I understand their reservations that the same Karuru failed to make an impression at Kaizer Chiefs, when matched against players of a better quality, and neither did he send the South African Division One into explosion last season when he played for Amazulu.

But, I am guided by my instincts and, after all, wasn’t Diego Costa rejected by three of the biggest clubs in Brazil — Palmeiras, Santos and Corinthians — because they thought he wasn’t good enough and the rest, as they say, is history?

Wasn’t Antoine Griezmann rejected by every club where he tried his luck in his native France because they argued he was either too small or too lightweight only for him to succeed in Spain, wasn’t Javier Zanetti, who became a legend at Inter Milan, rejected by Argentine club Independiente?

And didn’t Metz turn down the chance to sign Michel Platini, when he was 16, only for him to join Nancy before establishing himself as one of the finest footballers ever to play this game?

Yes, Ovidy, form is temporary, but class is permanent and you just have to admire this guy’s defiance even when everything looked very bleak after being dumped by Chiefs last year.

“To all Amakhosi supporters thank you for the support you gave me for the past two years though I didn’t get a chance to prove myself, but thank you for the messages of encouragement that you been sending,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

“May God bless you all and to Zimbabweans who have been following my progress sorry for letting you all down, but I promise you (that) come next season, wherever I will go, I WILL PLAY AND I WILL PERFORM, so those who know me and who have seen me play before, please JUDGE me next season. GOD BLESS YOU ALL.”

God bless you too boy and, thanks for using that moment of despair against Tanzania to inspire you and, hopefully, after tomorrow, you can change your cover photo and use one where you would be holding the COSAFA Cup in triumph.

To God Be The Glory

Come on Warriors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Khamaldinhoooooooooooooo!

Text Feedback — 0719545199 (I have graduated to OneFusion, why haven’t you?’’

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Chat with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber or read my material in The Southern Times or on www.sportszone.co.zw. The authoritative ZBC weekly television football magazine programme, Game Plan, is back on air and you can interact with me and the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika and producer Tich “Chief” Mushangwe every Monday night at 21.45pm.

Sharuko on Saturday
FOR a fleeting moment, he somehow out-sprinted Lloyd Mutasa, which was itself as huge a personal achievement as the one that had sent his emotions exploding and igniting this fiery fire inside him to run in that fading winter sunshine.

The old Warrior, like a raging alpha male lion back to retake its stolen kingdom, a graphic limp from the scars of those old fierce battles which left him with a left leg marginally shorter, still clearly visible, as he made his best imitation of the closest he can try to be football’s version of Usain Bolt.

His pride excited to see him back, exploding in animated celebrations, a grand party well and truly underway.

Then, nature, as it always does, quickly sorted itself out.

The younger, fitter and leaner Mutasa soon caught up with him, but chose not to overtake him — some moments are best enjoyed in great company, never in isolation, never far away from those who helped make it possible.

And this was one of them.

Mutasa simply plunged into the loving arms of his old mentor in a golden embrace filled with both joy and relief that whatever their remarkable tag team had been planning for more than two weeks, every day spent together in those trenches, had finally borne fruit.

It was like a journey back into the past, a nostalgic adventure back into those days almost 20 years ago, when the same duo had fallen into each other’s arms in a celebration not very much different from the one now playing out on the football field of this majestic stadium in the heart of the Bafokeng kingdom.

Back then, just like now, it had happened away from home, in a Nigerian city after Mutasa had scored a priceless goal against Eagle Cement that had powered Dynamos to a stunning victory in their ‘98 Champions League adventure.

For the older man, the head coach then as now, that victory on Nigerian soil had helped exorcise the demons of his previous visit to Africa’s most populous country, on another Champions League adventure two years earlier, when he had suffered the ultimate humiliation in a coaching career that represents greatness — a 1-5 thrashing at the hands of Shooting Stars in 1996.

But while their victory over Eagle Cement in Nigeria in ’98 was part of a series of impressive results that took them to the final of that year’s Champions League final, they eventually fell short in their quest for silverware after falling at the final hurdle in Abidjan, amid a storm of controversy.

On Sunday, in sharp contrast, they had reaped something big.

The dynamic duo from the house of the Glamour Boys, in animated celebrations after combining their coaching wisdom, with a helping hand from the vastly-underrated, but hugely resourceful and technically-and-tactically brilliant Bongani Mafu of course, to win a major trophy for their fatherland.

That this was his third COSAFA Cup crown, that he remains unbeaten in the 16 matches he has taken charge of his Warriors in this tournament and that the last time he was part of this football festival it had ended in a similar 3-1 victory in the final over Zambia, didn’t appear to dilute the thrill of the moment for the old man.

Watching him explode with boundless joy on Sunday appeared to suggest this was his finest hour, which should be surprising given what he has achieved before — winning seven league championships as coach of his beloved Glamour Boys, taking them to the final of the Champions League and ending his country’s 23-year wait for a place at the Nations Cup finals.

FOR MHOFU, THIS WAS HIS REDEMPTION SONG, SAYING IT BEST WHILE SAYING NOTHING AT ALL

Having covered Sunday, for all of the quarter-of-a-century that I have been working for this grand newspaper, I have to say I had never seen him release half the emotions, when it comes to celebrations, he displayed the moment his men sealed their COSAFA Castle Cup triumph on Sunday.

Given he is 65 now, it means I have covered his adventure since he was just 40, when he was still a young man who would ordinarily be expected to be very animated.

But, even in his best moments back then — like sealing his Glamour Boys’ Champions League final appearance or ending his country’s Nations Cup qualification nightmare — he never displayed such an outpouring of happiness like he did on Sunday.

This was Mhofu — like Bob Marley introducing probably his finest piece of music, which also happened to be his last song on his final album with the Wailers, to that crowd at Dortmund’s Westfalenhallen Stadium in Germany on June 13, 1980 — singing his own special Sunday cover version of Redemption Song.

That super song which Marley fittingly had to give us, a world he charmed with his voice and lyrics as a farewell present while he was being consumed by a battle against a cancer that would soon take his life, a song which his countryman and legendary poet, Mutabaruka, chose as the most influential recording in Jamaican music history.

A super song which meant so much for U2’s legendary front-man Bono, he revealed “I carried Bob Marley’s Redemption Song to every meeting I had with a politician, Prime Minister, or President, it was for me a prophetic utterance.’’

A super song which, somehow, Mhofu was singing to us, not in words, but in action, as he wheeled away in celebrations on Sunday.

Nineteen goals in just six matches crammed in a punishing programme where his men played half-a-dozen games in two weeks, appeared like Sunday’s silent, but explosive protest against us for having dared to doubt him, to label him as an old-fashioned coach whom time had long left stranded behind trapped in Stone Age.

Seven goals in the semi-final, and final, at an average of three goals per match which a number of experts said was virtually impossible for a group of players they expected to be drained by the huge volume of matches they had played, and a coach they said was the ultimate Defensive Advocate, was Sunday’s way of reminding us why we were possibly wrong to dismiss him as past his sell-by-date.

A bold message to us for daring to label him an ultra-defensive disciple, the one who remains allergic to the beauty of free-flowing attacking football, complete with its promise and harvest of goals, the last dinosaur standing, somehow resisting the extinction that had consumed his kind, an old-fashioned coach in a brand new football world.

An ISIS militant trying to find refugee in the company of FBI agents.

For us daring to label him a man whose commitment to a three-man defence, five midfielders and two forwards had long left him stranded in his own world by the sheer pace and evolution of a changing game now dominated by sports scientists and an army of Twitter and Facebook critics who suddenly find themselves with the power to upload a volley of criticism at the touch of their mobile phone.

For us daring to accuse him of being a traitor, a latter-day Judas Iscariot who could be seduced by thirty pieces of silver to auction his soul to the highest bidder, a latter-day version of those West Indies cricketers who were lured by the apartheid regime, 35 years ago, to break a sporting isolation of South Africa meant to break the spine of the oppressive white rulers and help the cause of their fellow disadvantaged majority blacks.

Maybe, Marley didn’t know he was about to die when he somehow chose the perfect song for us as his farewell present, but one gets a feeling there is a way that the very fate that distinguishes these legends — like Bob and Mhofu — from us mere mortals, provides them with a special way to communicate with us.

Marley found it in his classic “Redemption Song”, and renowned music blogger, Jim Beviglia, provided probably the best words to put all this in an article under the headline, ‘BEHIND THE SONG: BOB MARLEY, REDEMPTION SONG.’

“What if you had the chance to leave a final message before dying? What would you say? It would have to be something that summed up everything that you stood for in life,’’ Beviglia wrote in his piece published on February 6, 2014.

“While there’s no indication that Marley knew for sure that the song would be his last recorded document, the contemplative mood of ‘Uprising’ and the fact that he had been battling the cancer for years seems to suggest that he knew the end was near.

“Redemption Song begins with a story of how the narrator has been persecuted for years only to overcome it all with heavenly aid, leading to the aforementioned triumph. It was as if Marley was letting his millions of fans know that he was going to be all right in his next journey, just as the line implies his own Rastafarian faith was giving him strength in what must have been a time of great pain and fear.”

And, as I watched Sunday explode into that fireball of emotions on Sunday, I felt this was him singing his “Redemption Song”, and, as is always the case with such immortals, saying it best while saying nothing at all.

FROM CONTE TO SUNDAY, IT HAS BEEN QUITE AN EMOTIONAL ROLLER-COASTER RIDE PREGNANT WITH MEANING

Three defenders at the back, mobile wing backs who looked more like supplementary wingers than defenders, intense criticism of a system some said had long been overtaken by time, a stubborn streak to refuse be forced into changing what they believed in, new jobs, gruelling scrutiny and carrying a heavy burden of accusations of alleged impropriety.

These are just some of the common denominators that have featured prominently in the lives and times of Sunday Chidzambwa and Antonio Conte in a defining period for them in the past few months where a very thin line separated things from either going very, very well for them and, in the process, providing them with their redemption songs.

Or going very, very badly very bad for them and in the process, possibly providing them with a swansong, a painful final chapter, to their coaching careers.

Both knew that accepting the challenge for a flirtation with their national football teams again, as the head coaches, came with a lot of huge risks at a time when, in the eyes of some, they were still outcasts who shouldn’t be given the ultimate responsibility of superintending the one team that is the sporting face of its nation and whose appeal cuts across all tribal, racial and religious differences.

The odds were heavily stacked against them, should they dare take a chance and accept these huge jobs that came with increased public scrutiny, which included the good, the bad and the very, very ugly, at a time when, in the eyes of some, they didn’t have the level of purity of both innocence and morality for such a responsibility.

And where the possibility of failure in this adventure could be used by these same people as ammunition to savage them, and those who appointed them, with a tsunami of vicious criticism for their actions.

Conte had been accused, charged and punished with a 10-month suspension, in a match-fixing case, by the very Italian football authorities who turned to him, in their hour of need, to guide their national team, the Azzurri, which had badly lost its way since conquering the globe at the 2006 World Cup.

His appointment came long before his sanctions, which he had served, were eventually scrapped by an Italian judge.

Mhofu had been accused, charged and punished with a life ban, in a match-fixing case, by a previous band of Zimbabwean football leaders before a new group turned to him, in their hour of need, to guide the Warriors, who had badly lost their way in the COSAFA Cup since conquering the same tourney in 2009, under his guidance.

Conte eventually needed a judge of the court of Cremona to accept his pleas of innocence, and provide him with the freedom he had vigorously pursued for more than four years, which all came after he had served the Italian football authorities’ sanctions.

Mhofu got his reprieve from FIFA’s refusal to endorse the sanctions imposed on him, on the basis he hadn’t been given a fair trial and, crucially, a change of leadership that saw the new national football leaders scrapping his punishment and giving him the freedom to ply his trade on the domestic front again.

And Conte thrived as his national football coach during the qualifiers for Euro 2016 as the Azzurri won their group while, at the finals in France, the Italians topped their group, too, beating the then world number one-ranked side Belgium 2-0 in their first match while their 1-0 win over Sweden marked the first time they had won a second group game in a major international tournament in 16 years.

For a side that had suffered the humiliation of a first round exit at the 2014 World Cup finals, this was magical and, suddenly, the mood in Italy suddenly changed and the media and the fans, who had been very critical of Conte, started to support him with that backing exploding into the stratosphere when his team beat Spain 2-0 in the Round of 16.

And, like Mhofu’s public display of emotion in South Africa, Conte provided the enduring sights and sounds of Euro 2016 with his touchline theatrics, including suffering a bloody nose as he celebrated Emmanuel Giaccherini’s goal against Belgium, and jumping onto the roof of the dug-out after beating Spain.

“So far, Conte has been the stand-out boss in France,’’ journalist Steve Bates wrote in British tabloid, Daily Mirror.

“Pure box-office, stalking the touchline with demonic zeal, rowing with his own staff, taking on journalists before jumping on the dugout roof after beating Vicente del Bosque’s men.”

For Conte, just like Mhofu, those emotional explosions we have been seeing in these two coaches’ hour of triumph have been the deafening lyrics of their redemption songs and they have been singing them best by saying nothing at all.

To God Be The Glory

Come on Warriors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Khamaldinhoooooooooooooooooo!

Text Feedback — 0719545199 (I have graduated to OneFusion, why haven’t you?’’

WhatsApp Messenger — 0719545199

Email — robsharuko@gmail.com

Skype — sharuko58

Chat with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber or read my material in The Southern Times or on www.sportszone.co.zw. The authoritative ZBC weekly television football magazine programme, Game Plan, is back on air and you can interact with me and the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika and producer Tich “Chief” Mushangwe every Monday night at 21.45pm.