I’VE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AGAINST MARIO

Sharuko on Saturday

I HAVE nothing against Mario Marinica.

He is the coach of my national football team and that alone means I have to like him and, more importantly, support him.

It’s like the guy driving the bus you would be travelling in, or the pilot on the plane you are flying on, you have no choice but to like him.

As long as he is the one on the wheel, you both share a common destiny to safely reach your destination.

I have to confess that Mario wasn’t my first choice to be the Warriors coach.

I felt that a coach who was fired by Malawi and Liberia, where he failed to take the Lone Stars to a 24-team AFCON finals, wasn’t the best candidate for the Warriors.

But that was just my personal feeling, and it didn’t mean that I was right and those, who ended up setting for Mario, were wrong.

This means that once ZIFA settled for Mario, I had no choice but to support him because his success, in that job, also meant my team’s success.

Of course, for Mario, it’s just another job, another adventure, in a coaching career which has so far taken him to Asia and Africa.

Next week, he can wake up coaching Botswana, the team we will play tomorrow in the Four Nations tournament, and it will be business as usual for him.

But, for me, this is a bond built by blood.

It means I can’t wake up tomorrow supporting Botswana, it just doesn’t work that way, and if the Warriors are doomed to fail, so am I and there is nothing I can do about it.

Mario’s success, right now, is my team’s success.

And this also translates to my own success both as an all-weather fan and a journalist who has been a part of their story for more than three decades.

During that period, I have seen coaches come and go, Reinhard Fabisch remains my all-time favourite, even though he never took us to the AFCON finals.

The ’94 AFCON was a 12-team tournament, the 2025 AFCON was a 24-team tournament — twice the number of participants and twice the chances of qualifying.

It has become something like an invitational tournament with about half the CAF members qualifying for it.

It has even become such an embarrassment that a team with just two points in the group games, like Tanzania at the last AFCON, can qualify for the knockout phase of the tournament.

To put it into context, Mhofu’s team failed to qualify for the knockout phase with three points in 2004, Mhlauri’s team failed to qualify with three points in 2006 and Mapeza’s team failed to qualify with three points in 2021.

Of course, it’s not Mario’s problem that this was the case but it’s also important to put things into context.

And it’s a fact that our Romanian coach’s presence on the bench in Morocco dismally failed to improve our AFCON record as we finished where we have always finished — bottom of the table.

To make matters worse, we had just a point to our credit — picked up against Angola in a game which I feel we should have won had Mario’s flawed science, which bordered on foolishness, not betrayed us.

IS IT SCIENCE OR SHAKESPEAREAN WITCHCRAFT?

I want Mario to succeed, the same way I wanted Mhofu, Mhlauri, Pasuwa, Mapeza, Fabisch and all the other coaches to succeed because their success is also my national team’s success.

But, in wanting Mario to succeed, I should not be blinded by that feeling to the extent that I become a donkey which sees no weakness, hears no weakness and says nothing about the weakness of some of his decisions, which appear to have been plucked from hell. It’s like his decision to keep Tawanda Maswanhise on the bench, in our first two AFCON finals games, when he is the best forward that we have in our team.

He says it was a decision backed by science but to any normal person it’s very clear that it was a decision based on Shakespearian witchcraft, the Romanian representing Macbeth and his flawed science representing the Three Witches.

When we finally pushed him to pick Tawanda for the Bafana Bafana tie, the forward produced such a vintage performance the coach’s Mickey Mouse science beliefs were torn apart in just one-and-hour hours of a spellbinding individual show.

This is where I disagree with Mario.

Three months after our AFCON appearance, he has not yet taken time to explain to us about the science which not only misled him but also destroyed our campaign.

It’s easy to argue that had Tawanda played from the start, we were going to, at least, qualify for the knockout rounds.

Maybe, he wrote a report to his employers at ZIFA, fair and fine.

What is not fair and fine is that he hasn’t given the fans, whose bond with the Warriors doesn’t come with being voted into office but is a lifelong commitment soaked in blood, an explanation of the kind of science which told him Tawanda wasn’t good enough to start in those two games.

Remarkably, it’s not Tawanda alone.

He hasn’t told us why he keeps ignoring Marshall Munetsi from national duty.

This week, he struggled to shed light into his divisive move by using a number of words to say nothing.

He tried to give a PR spin to his man-made disaster created by his questionable, and laughable, decision to freeze Munetsi out of the national team.

He spoke about wanting to meet Munetsi as if he is forgetting that he went on a wild tour of Europe, where he even met players who play in the amateur leagues there, and decided there was no point in sitting down and talking to the Warrior.

Now, he is back in Harare,

When he was in London, just an hour’s flight to where Munetsi was, he decided to ignore him and he didn’t see any value in talking to him.

Now that he is in Harare, 12,000 kms away, Mario starts selling us this PR stuff that he now wants to talk to Munetsi.

He thinks he is talking to some pupils in an ECD special class.

I’M THE VOICE OF THE VOICELESS

I will not stop writing about Munetsi or Walter Musona as long as I’m not given any justification as to why they are not being picked and other players, who are not at their level, keep being picked.

That’s my job.

When you call Godknows Murwira, who has not played a league game all season, and ignore his teammate Walter, who has been one of the league’s star players in the early part of the campaign, we are justified to ask questions.

I’m their voice just like I am the voice of the fans who have been asking these questions, and getting no answers, leaving them to now voice their concerns through placards which we are now seeing at our stadiums.

I was there in Mabvuku, all those years ago, when Munetsi — who was still in primary school — won an award as the best footballer at Desmund Ali’s Ali Sundowns academy.

Since then I have followed his journey and written about it, in good and bad times, and I have to say that it’s been the privilege of my life to cover his rise from Mabvuku to paying against Messi and company.

And, when he insisted that his contract at Stade Reims should include a clause which directed a portion of his income to go to his foundation, with the money used to support underprivileged children in Zimbabwe, I realised I was not just covering an ordinary man.

I realised I had been covering a beautiful story of a true leader.

Stade Reims realised they had someone special on their roster and the club decided that it would donate 100 euros, for every kilometre he covered on the field of play, to his foundation.

I have said that I think Mario is a good coach for the Warriors, even though he is yet to win an AFCON finals game, while barking orders from the bench, on the two occasions he graced the tournament.

He was in isolation, after testing positive for Covid, when Malawi edged the Warriors 2-1 at the 2021 AFCON finals with his assistant Meke Mwase barking the orders.

But, where I disagree with Mario is his tendency to think that we should not get an explanation of why he makes some dubious decisions which, even to my kid, simply can’t be justified, unless one is using Shakespearean witchcraft, disguised as science.

To God Be The Glory

Peace to the GEPA Chief, the Big Fish, George Norton, Daily Service, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and all the Chakariboys still in the struggle.

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

Khamaldinhoooooooooooo!

Text Feedback – +263772545199

WhatsApp – +263772545199

You can also interact with me on Twitter (@Chakariboy), Facebook, Instagram (sharukor)