Born On Friday The 13th

that since the 14th century and the fear associated with this day is called Friggatriskaidekapho-bia.
It’s real and in the United States alone, it affects an estimated 20 million people, and some believe it’s a combination that comes from beliefs that Friday is an unlucky day and 13 is an unlucky number.
The number 12 has always been considered the number of completeness and this is reflected in the twelve months making a year, twelve items making a dozen, twelve hours making the clock, the twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ our Lord and the twelve tribes of Israel.
So the number 13, which follows this completeness, has always been seen to be evil and the fact that after the Last Supper, one of the 13 people on the table had to die, has only helped to prop up the myth about 13 being such an unlucky number.
American rapper Tupac Shakur, whose gangster music made a huge impact in this world, was pronounced dead, following a drive-by shooting incident, on Friday the 13th in September, 1996.
But the real story that has always fascinated the world, and boosted the myth about Friday the 13th, was the 1972 plane crash of a Uruguay Air Force plane, carrying a rugby club from Montevideo, in the Andes mountain range. It happened on Friday the 13th in October 1972. An error by the pilots resulted in the plane slamming into the mountains and of the 45 people on board, who included players and their relatives and friends, 12 died in the crash, another five had died by the next morning and another one died on the eighth day following the accident.
So for the 27, who remained trapped on the freezing mountains and having been badly injured in the crash and without anything to protect them from the bitter weather conditions, this turned into a nightmarish battle for survival. Seven days later eight people died in an avalanche, leaving 19 survivors.
The doctor on the plane, Francisco Nicola, had died in the crash and a surviving medical student, in his second year of studies, who survived the crash, had to use parts of the remains of the aircraft to make splints and braces.
Three countries sent a number of search parties to look for the missing plane but, since its colour was white, it meant that its remains blended in with the snow and none of the rescue crews could locate it from the sky.
By the eighth day, the search was cancelled and the survivors, who had found a transistor radio in the plane, heard the news of the cancellation on a radio bulletin.
The survivors had small amounts of food but soon the supplies ran out and, given there was nothing to hunt in that remote snow-covered mountain range where there was no vegetation, the group had to make a collective and mind-blowing decision to feed on the flesh from their dead teammates and friends to survive.
Given that this was a closely-knit group, with the majority being either classmates or close friends, this was a big and tough decision.
Some resisted it at first, but soon realised it was their only means to survive, and started eating the human flesh.
Between November 15, 1972, and December 12 that year, three survivors – Arturo Nogueira, Rafael Echavarren and Numa Turcatti – died and by the time the people were rescued on December 22, in a mission that spilled into the following day, their numbers had dwindled to 16.
Miraculously they had spent 72 days trapped in the mountain ranges, feeding on human flesh, and survived the ordeal and, while they initially tried to hide the fact that they had eaten human beings, word soon leaked and they were forced to hold a joint media conference to confirm the issue.
A number of films were born from that incident – Supervivientes des los Andes, Alive In The Andes, Alive – 20 Years Later, Stranded – I Have Just Come From A Plane That Crashed On The Mountains and The Miracle Of The Andes.

Football’s Friday The 13th
World football has had its Friday the 13th – from the match-fixing scandals exploding around the globe to the sensational claims in the British Parliament that senior Fifa executive members received kickbacks in the race to host the 2022 World Cup.
It has been a horror show for Sepp Blatter, who faces a tough challenge from Mohamed Bin Hammam for the Fifa presidency, when the world’s football governing body holds its congress next month.
Once considered an outsider in the race to replace Blatter, who appears to have spent all his life serving Fifa, there is a feeling that the scandals have now turned Bin Hammam, the Qatari who heads the Asian Football Confederation, into a dark horse with a good chance of beating the incumbent.
Blatter has been firm, in the past week, donating US$29 million to Interpol, spread over 10 years, to help fight organised crime believed to be behind the match-fixing and illegal betting syndicates and demanding evidence from the British over claims that his fellow executive members were bribed.
I have always loved Blatter and I supported him all the way, when he launched his challenge for the Fifa presidency at the turn of the millennium, even though Issa Hayatou was telling all the African countries that they needed to vote for Swede Lennart Johansson, who was then the head of Uefa.
Under a succession plan crafted by Hayatou and Johannsson, the Swede was to hand over the Fifa presidency to the Cameroonian after four years, on condition that Hayatou delivered the entire African vote, and the Caf president would have turned Fifa president in 2002.
Of course, Southern and Eastern African countries, who have always felt marginalised by Hayatou and his Caf cronies, rebelled against the leadership and voted for Blatter who won in the first round to deliver a crushing victory for the Swiss.
The rebels had to pay and Zimbabwe was stripped of its rights to host the 2000 Nations Cup finals, on the flimsy excuse that the country was ill-prepared for the event, Hayatou and his Caf did not bring the Nations Cup to Southern Africa until 2010 and, crucially, they didn’t support South Africa’s bid to host both the 2006 and 2010 World Cup finals.
Allegations that emerged this week apparently claimed that Hayatou was paid by the Moroccans to support their bid, which clearly had no chance, against a Rainbow Nation that provided the best option and provided a tournament to make all of us proud.
Of course, Hayatou denies the allegations.
Blatter is clearly standing on shaky ground right now and, as head of Fifa, he holds ultimate responsibility for all the madness that is engulfing world football and it is fair to suggest that, as he became engrossed in a fight to keep power at all cost, he probably lost the responsibility to monitor his organisation.
As Blatter slept on duty, corruption flourished in Fifa and were it not for The Sunday Times of England, with its sting operations that brought the mercenary in Amos Adamu and his colleagues in the World Cup votes-for-cash scandal, the football world and its leadership would have been moving on as if everything is normal.
When Ismail Bhamjee, then a Fifa executive member, was caught selling World Cup tickets at three times their face value at the 2006 World Cup in Germany, the easy path for Blatter was to dismiss him rather than look at the bigger picture that the Botswana national had only just been unfortunate to be caught in a game that was being played by many.
Dismissing Bhamjee killed the story but it did not kill the game and those who hadn’t been caught remained on the gravy train and simply changed tactics.
After all Bhamjee was just a delegate from Botswana, whose country had never qualified for the Nations Cup final, and who cared, really, even if he was dismissed?
The football world would certainly go on.
And it did, complete with its dark secrets.
When British award-winning journalist was broadcasting his programme, “The Beautiful Bung: Corruption and the World Cup,” on BBC’s Panorama programme in 2006, which investigated allegations of bribery in Fifa, including bribes running into millions of dollars to secure marketing rights for collapsed company ISL, noone listened.
When Jennings claimed that Fifa vice-president Jack Warner, who is the Concacaf president, had abused his authority to secure the 2006 World Cup tickets for his family and sell them at a profit on the black market, Blatter dismissed it all.
When Jennings broadcast Fifa’s Dirty Secrets on November 29 2010, which claimed there would be corruption in the voting process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup, and said Ricardo Teixeira of Brazil, Nicolas Leoz of Paraguay and Issa Hayatou were involved, noone listed because Fifa was a closed shop.
Yes, it would be wrong to believe that Blatter should monitor every movement of an executive member who is expected to understand the moral responsibility of his position and who is paid handsomely for his services to Fifa, and there are just too many of them for such an exercise to be successful.
But it’s a fact that reports about Fifa executive members trading their votes for cash and other dividends surfaced a long time ago and, even when Charles Dempsey walked away from casting his vote, in very controversial fashion as South Africa suffered a bitter defeat in the race to host the 2006 World Cup, Blatter behaved as if everything was normal.
He moved mountains to bring the World Cup to Africa, for the first time, and for that we should always be thankful.
But that should not cloud our judgment of a man whose leadership abilities have certainly been brought into question now and, as leader, he holds the ultimate responsibility for the rotten picture that Fifa has acquired right now.
Blatter has helped to turn football into a successful commercial story but, at the same time, his success has seemingly blinded him from the responsibility of running an organisation that should be built on the values of integrity and the Fifa that we have today is too controversy-ridden it has lost its glamour.
And Blatter, even though he might not be corrupt himself, ultimately carries the weight of the burden of the rot that has crept in his organisation, as he chose to look elsewhere, and world football is poorer today with all the controversy stalking it.

Match-Fixing, Illegal Gambling And Fifa
Blatter made a grand stand announcement on Monday that he was taking the curse of match-fixing head-on and his US$29 million donation to Interpol showed that he was ready for a long fight that he intends to win.
Virtually everyone in the world is on Blatter’s side on that one because noone wants to see delayed games, coming out as if they are live matches, simply because some shadowy characters are playing games with either the players or the referees.
But Blatter’s critics will also point out the fact that the shadowy world of match-fixers, whose empire now spreads across the globe, has thrived and turned into such a monster simply because the Fifa president chose to concentrate on other issues.
Issues like who hosts the World Cup, which brings in all the money for Fifa, and which brings in all the glamour for its leaders. Issues like who controls the television rights for the World Cup, because that is where all the money will be made by Fifa, and – for its capitalist leaders – it has been all that has mattered to them.
Issues like how to keep power, and win another four-year term in charge of world football, because that is all that has mattered and making sure that the right people are in the right positions to vote, takes a hell lot of time, effort and concentration.
Blatter is not new to Fifa and has been either its secretary-general or its president for three decades now and whatever has flourished, in the underworld and given birth to all these match-fixing scandals, has happened right under his nose.
His critics will rightly say that if Blatter failed to contain this shadowy match-fixing curse, in the 30-plus-odd years that he has been in power either as number one or number two in Fifa, what guarantees do we have that he can do it in the last four years of his life in the organisation?
What I can see, in all this, is that a desperate Blatter, trying to hang on to his job, will try to make an example of the weaker nations, all in the name of making a grand stage stance in fighting corruption, and it’s likely that Zimbabwean players might be sacrificed.
Of course, those who sold their soul should face the music, but the tragedy would be for Fifa to apply their sanctions selectively and find it easy to punish Zimbabwean players, because they were in Asia, and don’t do the same for Botswana players who played some dubious matches in China leading to the dismissal of their FA chief executive.
If it’s a genuine worldwide probe, then let it be exhaustive and Fifa should look at all the games that have been played in Asia and they will find that a number of African national teams have been there before and, if the region is a hotbed of match-fixing, what guarantees are there that those games were above board?
England, of all teams, would have played the same Thailand that played a Zimbabwe Select during a controversial tour in December 2009, in a friendly international in Bangkok in June this year, and everything was in order until the Three Lions pulled out after their country failed to win the bid to host the 2018 World Cup finals.
The English FA had agreed to play the match, described by the Daily Telegraph as “a game of no value to coach Fabio Capello,” to try and secure the vote of Thai Fifa executive member Worawi Makudi in the race to host the 2018 World Cup.
Makudi did not vote for England in a humiliating first round exit.
Given that Makudi is a Fifa executive member, and the head of the Football Association of Thailand, wasn’t it proper for Fifa leaders to turn to him for explanations, when reports surfaced last year that the Zimbabwe Select/Thailand match could have been targeted by match-fixing agents, to get an explanation?
If the head of an entire Football Association, who also happens to be a Fifa executive committee member, can watch from a distance as his country hosts such controversial matches, and does not get any grilling from his Fifa counterparts or the Fifa boss, surely isn’t Fifa also liable for the corruption so pronounced in the game?
You can’t target players who featured in a controversial game in Thailand, simply because they are poor Zimbabweans, without also looking at the powerful people who prepared the ground for such a match, and the president of the Thai Football Association, incredibly a Fifa executive member, is also culpable.
His association is just as much to blame, for preparing the ground for such a match to be staged, as the Zifa officials who let that makeshift team leave on that unsanctioned tour of duty and where the players found themselves in a, to quote Fifa’s words, hotbed of match-fixing.
Did Makudi and his Thai FA officials carry a due diligence exercise of the people who were organising that friendly, their credentials, their past and, if we give them the benefit of doubt that it escaped them, then it brings to fore the complexity of this shadowy world of criminals.
There is no hiding from the fact that our players, in the event of being found guilty of willingly accepting money in return of deciding the outcome of matches, will have to pay the penalty but I have a problem with a system that appears to turn a blind eye on BIG people, within the Fifa leadership, who played a part in creating conditions fertile for such corruption.
Is it surprising, therefore, that this week Makudi was implicated in the World Cup bribery scandal, by former English FA chairman Lord Triesman, where he is alleged to have asked for the television rights, of the England/Thailand game, in return of his vote for the England 2018 World Cup bid?
Yesterday the Thai Sports Ministry said he lost his rights to remain FA chief in December last year, as the country appears to divorce itself from the Fifa executive committee member in the wake of the eruption of the scandal. This is all fishy and, in my mind, this is a BIG game where our little players are ending up as little pawns. There was something landmark which Commissioner Friedhelm Althans, the Bochum police chief who busted a match-fixing syndicate in his country and who believes more than 300 matches in his nation, said on Monday at that function where Blatter announced that Fifa would be pouring in US$29 million into Interpol to fight match-fixing.
It’s relevant to our case and helps give light to the pressures that our players possibly found themselves in Asia.
Althans said the match-fixing agents have even KILLED those who have stood between them and their money-making ventures.
“I CAN’T IDENTIFY THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE DIED, BUT CERTAINLY I BELIEVE IT (HAS HAPPENED),” HE SAID.
“THIS IS A SPECIAL FORM OF ORGANISED CRIME, A NEW PHENOMENON IN EUROPE. IN ASIA WE HAVE SEEN THIS FOR MANY YEARS BUT IN EUROPE, THIS PROBLEM WAS NOT SO OBVIOUS.”
You can create your own picture of the possible threats that might have been facing our players out there in Asia.
If Fifa really want a true clean-up exercise, it should be ready to lose most of its Asian football leaders and, with a Congress where the FA leaders elect the Fifa president looming and Blatter facing the battle of his life, we can only imagine the possibilities.
And there is a problem, too, in terms of Blatter’s donation to Interpol this week.
“It has become clear yet again in recent days that something urgently needs to be done to improve and enhance the image of Fifa ,” Bin Hammam wrote on his blog on Thursday.
“The name of our great sport and its leading institution have been dragged through the mud once more. I will happily and unreservedly restate that I firmly believe Fifa, as a decision-making body and as an organisation, is not corrupt.
“Currently, the President has taken on too much of an Executive role, as evidenced by the recently announced initiative to donate 20 million dollars to Interpol. Imagine Fifa financing Interpol’s activities?
“This decision was taken arbitrarily by the Fifa President and was not discussed with the Executive Committee.
“It is just another example of the current regime choosing to run football how it sees fit, rather than doing so in a manner that is consistent with the governing body’s proper procedures. How on earth can we convince people of Fifa’s innocence?”
Yesterday Fifa issued a statement and said the donation was above board because the chairman of the Fifa Finance Committee had been consulted and he approved the deal.
So who do we believe now?
Where does this leave the poor man in Murambinda?
What is Fifa coming to really?

When A Disgraced Lord Becomes King
So Lord Triesman has shaken world football with his allegations that Fifa executive members, including Issa Hayatou, were given bribes to vote to Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup finals and, specifically, said the Caf boss received 1,5 million pounds.
Fifa haven’t suspended Hayatou and company, but have asked for evidence, which I feel is only proper and should always be the guiding principle for the organisation and goalposts should not be changed depending on the status of an individual.
But how did Lord Triesman bounce back to become the flavour of the season once more?
Isn’t this the same man who quit his post as English FA chairman in a huff?
Maybe the following article, published by the BBC on May 16 last year, paints an interesting picture of the man.
Lord Triesman quits FA and 2018 World Cup
bid jobs
LONDON – Lord Triesman is to stand down as chairman of the Football Association as well as the England 2018 World Cup bid.
His exit follows what he has called his “entrapment” by the Mail on Sunday.
The newspaper article said he suggested Spain could drop its 2018 bid if rival bidder Russia HELPED BRIBE referees at this summer’s World Cup.
The England 2018 team has apologised to the Russian and Spanish FAs.
“I have decided to resign as chairman of the FA and the 2018 Bid board,” Triesman said in a statement.
“A private conversation with someone whom I thought to be a friend was taped without my knowledge and passed to a national newspaper,” he added, referring to former aide Melissa Jacobs, who met Triesman a fortnight ago.
“That same friend has also chosen to greatly exaggerate the extent of our friendship.
“In that conversation I commentated on speculation circulating about conspiracies around the world. Those comments were never intended to be taken seriously, as indeed is the case with many private conversations.
“Entrapment, especially by a friend, is an unpleasant experience both for my family and me but it leaves me with no alternative but to resign.”
Triesman’s resignation statement followed an FA board meeting that lasted over two hours.
“It would have been difficult for the FA to have sacked John Terry and for Triesman to have stayed on,” said new Sports Minister Hugh Robertson, referring to England coach Fabio Capello’s decision to strip Terry of the England captaincy over an extra-marital affair last year.
“I’m very impressed with the way it has been handled,” Robertson told the BBC News channel. “The danger was this could have drifted on. I’m pleased they have acted decisively and they have done the right thing.
“Nobody could pretend that this hasn’t been a good day. But the trick now is to refocus everyone’s attempts on the bid. It can be done and if you concentrate on the bid’s core strengths we can get over this.”
Triesman was quoted in the article as saying: “SPAIN ARE LOOKING FOR HELP . . . TO BRIBE REFEREES.”
The FA tried unsuccessfully to get an injunction against publication of the Triesman story on privacy grounds.
The Mail on Sunday quotes Triesman as saying: “THERE’S SOME EVIDENCE THAT THE SPANISH FOOTBALL AUTHORITIES ARE TRYING TO IDENTIFY REFEREES . . . AND PAY THEM.
“MY ASSUMPTION IS THAT THE LATIN AMERICANS, ALTHOUGH THEY’VE NOT SAID SO, WILL VOTE FOR SPAIN.
AND IF SPAIN DROP OUT, BECAUSE SPAIN ARE LOOKING FOR HELP FROM RUSSIA TO HELP BRIBE THE REFEREES IN THE WORLD CUP, THEIR VOTES MAY THEN SWITCH TO RUSSIA.” – BBC Sport
Lord Triesman duly quit his posts clearly in disgrace but, exactly a year later, he seemingly bounces back and turns into a credible source whose claims turns world football upside down once again.
Amid all the hysteria sparked by the allegations, conveniently said under the immunity of Parliament, British Sports Minister Hugh Robertson made an interesting observation as he called for Fifa to reform itself.
“I think we have to be honest as a country that Lord Triesman made these allegations in Parliament but THEY ARE GOING TO BE VERY DIFFICULT TO ACTUALLY PROVE BECAUSE THESE WERE JUST COVERSATIONS HE HAD WITH INDIVIDUALS.”
Surely, where is world football going to?
Football, bloody football.
It all Looks Gloomy For The Warriors
The big question this week has centred on how the Warriors can concentrate on their big must-win 2012 Nations Cup qualifier against Mali on June 5, exactly three weeks from now, given everything that is happening around them in connection to Asiagate.
It won’t be easy, no matter how we try to downplay it, for the majority of the players to apply themselves fully with all the threats of bans hanging over their heads.
Maybe we should have taken a stance, as a nation and as a football leadership, a long time ago to excuse all the players, whose future is threatened by the Asiagate axe, from Warriors’ assignments until their cases have been resolved and they have been cleared.
But then they haven’t only been playing for their clubs but they have been doing a good job of it and Method Mwanjali was named by Bafana Bafana defender Matthew Booth as the best defender in South Africa in his maiden season in Super Diski.
It has even been made worse by the way Fifa’s decision to undertake a global investigation into match-fixing and the media interpretation, every time the issue comes up, that the Zimbabwean players face the end of their careers.
I have to say that Ndumiso Gumede and his team have been professional in the way they have handled their exercise, even as pressure mounts for them from the media to give leads that could provide the basis for stories to pile the pressure on the players.
It has certainly not been an easy job.
Ultimately the players and everyone implicated will have to be judged by their actions and, if there is a price to pay, they have to do so.
But Gumede clarified the issue very well this week when he said that, after the completion of their investigations, whoever is implicated will be dragged before a special committee that will see the allegations leveled against those individuals and also hear the defence case from those individuals.
It’s that committee that will decide who is guilty and who is not and, until a decision is reached by that committee, the process remains in motion in as far as the fate of those implicated is concerned.
Obviously, given the sensitivity of the case and the serious consequences of being found on the wrong side, it’s very likely that lawyers will be brought in, certain positions will be argued differently and expertly it will be a lengthy process before it all comes to an end.
What Gumede and his team have done is to break the mystery and we now know that there was more to what happed during the trips to Asia than might have met the eye.
As to the specific parts played by the different individuals is what has to be determined and what those people will have to answer for.
Fifa, if it is possible, should also provide funding for Gumede and his team to visit the far East, especially Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and China so that they can try and get answers to some of the questions that are emerging.
Certainly the Football Association of Malaysia have to tell Gumede and his team how they ended up establishing relations with match-fixing agents, to the extent that they could organise games for their national team and on their home soil, because their degree of culpability looks very pronounced here.
The same way that the previous Zifa board will also have to give a comprehensive report to Gumede and his team of the due diligence exercise they engaged, when they first entered into a partnership with these shadowy agents, and how the bigger picture probably escaped them.
Interestingly Morocco, Senegal, Ghana, Algeria, Sierra Leone and Lesotho have all played matches against Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur and maybe there is need to look into all those games given, as Fifa now says, this is the hotbed of match-fixing.
English Premiership clubs make annual pilgrimage to Malaysia for their pre-season friendlies and, just four days after Monomotapa, masquerading as the Warriors, played their second and final match against Malaysia, the Asian nation hosted Manchester United in a high-profile international friendly on July 18 2009.
United won 3-2 and, given that Malaysia has spilled into the spotlight, maybe Fifa will consider looking into that game.
In July, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal are set to be in Malaysia for matches against the Asian national team with the Gunners’ game scheduled for July 10 and the Blues game set for July 21.
Right in the hotbed of match-fixing!
My point here being that certainly, if Asia is that corrupt, Zimbabwe can’t be the only opponents who were corrupted and, if that is the case, let’s also see this investigation embracing other names and countries.
Botswana were in China and played some dodgy games there leading to the dismissal of their FA CEO but it has all been quiet on the western front because noone seemingly wants to soil the image of a Zebras side that has just qualified for their maiden Nations Cup finals.
Justice, bloody justice!

Yes, Here We Are About To Make It Nineteen
Well that banner at Old Trafford on Sunday said it all – “In ’94 You Said Come Back When It’s 18, Well, Here We are, Sat On Your Perch.”
Well, let’s win it today and throw the challenge on a fast-improving Liverpool, who are now in very good hands, to try and respond.
It has been a great ride and worth all the pain.
Manchester United fans have always found immense pleasure in reminding rivals Manchester City of the last time they won major silverware and, every year, the Red Devils have crafted a huge banner, whose figures change with the passage of time, to hammer home the message and rub in the insults.
This year, the number was 34, counting the years that have passed since City won their last title – the League Cup in 1976.
But that is about to change this afternoon as City can end the long wait and win the FA Cup, with a victory over Stoke, and the guys at Old Trafford have been juggling with all sorts of ideas about how to handle the numbers game. Well, it’s easy.
The guys have just changed the numbers and, instead of 34, it now reads 43 – the number of years since City last won the championship when, on the final day of the season, they beat Newcastle United to claim the title in 1968.
That year United won the European Cup. Need I say more?
Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chicharito!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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