adminMerry Christmas to the fans of football in this country, probably the best in the world, and that you still come to watch our Premiership games, in an era where every decent footballer is taken across the Limpopo by those clubs of Super Diski, including funny teams like Polokwane City, is testimony of your loyalty to a game clearly short on star quality
SEASON’S greetings Zimbabwe, just a few days before Christmas, in the year Dynamos marked their Golden Jubilee, and lied to us, that there will be grand celebrations to mark the special occasion.
CAPS United turned 40, and probably forgot about it, and in a year in which the Green Machine faced a number of operational challenges, remembering the journey they have travelled, the success they have achieved and the ones they have lost along the way, appeared way down their priority list.
It’s now exactly 10 years after Sunday Chidzambwa and his gallant Warriors gave us our first Nations Cup finals ticket, when Peter Ndlovu and his troops exorcised the ghost that had stalked their campaign on the continent.
Time flies, doesn’t it, and it’s hard to believe that 20 years have flown past since Chris Sibanda and Morrison Sifelani ran the first Premiership season with Highlanders being crowned champions and Agent Sawu winning the Soccer Star of the Year?
Oh, yes, to my friends at 53 Livingstone Avenue, I haven’t forgotten you.
Despite all the raw hatred that appears to drive some of you guys to spend nights plotting for my downfall, instead of doing the simple task of securing funds to ensure that the Warriors have their supper in camp, here’s my toast your Golden Jubilee and wishing you a very successful 2014.
May the New Year bring success, in the form of our triumph at CHAN, which Zifa spokesman Xolisani Gwesela called a “very important tournament”, even though we have to live with the reality that, when the real tournament gets underway in Brazil, a few months later, we will once again be watching from a distance.
It doesn’t matter, really, that you sold us a dummy that you were trying to bring former English champions Manchester City to come here as part of a host of activities to commemorate the Golden Jubilee.
Maybe the interest died down when Manchester City regional manager, Daniel Paiser, advised that his team was unable to visit and the English club opened themselves up for discussions with Zifa on the possibility of exploring “partnerships across the whole of the African continent,” which would be centred on programmes “based around soccer schools, coaching and regional partnerships.”
We all know now, don’t we, that when you mention things like programmes for soccer schools, and not talk about the glamour that comes with bringing a top club like Manchester City to town, that you are drifting far away from the island, of glitz, which the people at 53 Livingstone Avenue want to live on.
It doesn’t matter that your announcement that, in the event you fail to bring Manchester City into town you would go for their town rivals, Manchester United or Liverpool, to grace the Golden Jubilee celebrations was nothing but a grandstanding show full of promise but, as has become common with issues to do with Zifa, short on delivery.
Of course, by now, we know that your story that you were luring African champions Nigeria, as well as Italian and Spanish giants Juventus and Real Madrid, to come here and grace your Golden Jubilee celebrations was nothing but a story told by a fool, full of sound and fury, but with no substance to back it.
Neither does it matter that the promise that a Hall of Fame, to honour a number of individuals, companies and organisations that have made a significant contribution to the national game in the last 50 years, would be unveiled this year, remains to be fulfilled.
It’s all part of our game, isn’t it, promises and lies, and it has become so acceptable that the media has even dropped its role to ask tough questions, as and when what the nation was promised is not delivered, and maybe in the spirit of Christmas, it’s better to leave all that negativity, at least for now, and just bask in the mood of celebrations.
Yes, Merry Christmas Jonathan Mashingaidze, the chief executive that Zifa boss Cuthbert Dube said, in an interview with the best-selling tabloid H-Metro, needs to be further groomed to help him function efficiently in the office he occupies, Xolisani Gwesela, the association’s spokesman who has developed a chronic tendency of lying, seeing no evil, hearing no evil and speaking no evil he is football’s version of Saddam Hussein’s Comical Ali.
Merry Christmas to the boss, himself, Dube who has steered his ship through yet another season where violent storms kept battering his vessel, threatening to sink it now and again, and now faces three months in which he has to convince the football family that he is the right man to lead them for another four years.
Merry Christmas to Ndumiso Gumede, the man has been there since as far back as we can try to remember, the man who never seems to leave the trenches of football administration in this country, the man whose name has become synonymous with Zifa and, after initially telling us that he won’t be standing for another term, has had a change of mind and wants another four years.
Merry Christmas to my brother, Benedict Moyo, who has noticeably withdrawn himself from the spotlight in recent months and, in the company of fellow technical experts from the region, has found true love in taking a very close look at the best teenage football talents whenever the Cosafa Under-20 championships come to life.
Merry Christmas to Twine Phiri and his PSL family, I know that Cuthbert Mutandwa rocked your boat in a very big way, with that 28-page dossier that found itself into the newspapers, but Kelly Clarkson, the singer, told us that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” and, given that you survived your board of governors’ scrutiny, the challenge is to do things in a better way for the sake of the sponsors.
Merry Christmas to the fans of football in this country, probably the best in the world, and that you still come to watch our Premiership games, in an era where every decent footballer is taken across the Limpopo by those clubs of Super Diski, including funny teams like Polokwane City, is testimony of your loyalty to a game clearly short on star quality.
Merry Christmas To Dibango, Thanks For Everything
Merry Christmas to Ian “Dibango” Gorowa, probably the only unbeaten national team coach in the world today, whose arrival on the scene, after years spent in South Africa, hasn’t produced the fireworks that we saw with Reinhard Fabisch but has brought a certain stability and, crucially, hope that tomorrow will be a better day.
It’s hard not to like Dibango.
He was settled in South Africa, which had become his adopted home for more than a decade, where a number of avenues were open for him to pursue his career either in club coaching or as one of the pundits who would digest the game on television.
But Dibango came home, to help the national team that he played for, not because he was interested in the money that the job provided, and given Zifa’s financial challenges there wasn’t any guarantee that his pay cheque will ever come, but simply because he wanted to make a difference to his country.
Although he has been offered a contract by Zifa, Gorowa is yet to sign it because, as he told me, he knows the association isn’t in a position to fund all that they promised in their document and, rather than starting unnecessary fights that his employers have failed to take care of this and that, as promised in their contract, he felt they should just work, on a gentleman’s agreement, until the financial situation at 53 Livingstone Avenue improves or, as is hoped, sponsors come along.
He was the architect who persuaded British sportswear firm, Umbro, to come here and run a pilot project of engagement, with the Warriors, which will see the company kitting the national team, when they play at the CHAN finals next month, which will be a welcome change from what we saw at the Cosafa Under-20 championships, where our Young Warriors used a kit that would have been out of place at the Homeless World Cup.
On Wednesday, Dibango even went the extra mile and, when his team found themselves in an awkward situation when their hosts told them that there would be no supper that evening, because Zifa had not paid the camping costs, the coach decided to use his personal money to buy food for his men.
Crucially, Gorowa didn’t try to hide the crisis, which his team found itself in, and felt it would be in the best interest of his men, both in the short-term and long-term, if their challenges were not hidden from the fans, who support them, and the companies that they want to back them, and told The Herald the grim situation in camp.
It takes a brave man, who sticks to his principles and isn’t afraid of being fired for what he believes in, for someone to do what Gorowa did on Wednesday, taking the challenges that his team faced in their camp into the public domain, and in a game that is polarised by divisions, some within Zifa, like Gwesela, were quick to play their usual card, to shift the blame on those they claim to be “anti-football.”
But, as it turned out, there was a real crisis in camp and while Gwesela would have wanted this to be kept away from the public eye, the truth is that the publication of that article, in which Gorowa told the true picture of what was happening in their house, has helped them in a big way with the Government promising that this will not be allowed to happen again.
The next day, like a true professional, Gorowa wasn’t going on and on about the challenges that they had faced the previous night but, in his address to journalists, spoke about his players, the morale that was in their camp, the mission that they want to complete in South Africa and where, his tone was flat the previous day, it was now lively.
Gorowa continues to impress many neutrals, the longer that he stays in his job, and while many coaches might have been frustrated by Zifa’s failure to fund the 20-day training camp that he wanted ahead of CHAN, he just accepted it and decided to engage Plan B.
Once again, Merry Christmas Dibango, and all the best wishes for a prosperous New Year because, after what you have gone through this year, and still managed to deliver, giving us one good result after another, including that unforgettable victory over those Zambians in their fortress that knocked them out of CHAN, you deserve every success that will come your way.
You are one brave young man Dibango and, as they say in this Queen’s language, fortune always favours the brave.
Why Does Gwesela Lie With Such Impunity?
Zifa spokesman, Gwesela, is turning himself into a classic liar, a man who is perfecting the art of telling lies in such a good and authoritative way you would think is he is telling the truth, a man who has become the greatest spin-doctoring wizard of our football and that he came from virtually nowhere, to become the face of the association, explains the bleeps and blunders.
What really stinks, about the way Gwesela packages his lies, is that they are usually accompanied by threats even, at times, when it’s clear that Zifa, too, have fallen prey to the liquidity crunch that has squeezed all our pockets in recent weeks.
Somehow, a man who was unknown in domestic football until Mashingaidze decided to rope him into the Zifa office, in a recruitment drive for posts at 53 Livingstone Avenue that has already been questioned by Dube in his interview with H-Metro, is now behaving as if he is the be-all-and-end-all of domestic football.
Everything has to start with him, and also end with him, and if he is not delivering useless letters at stadiums, which are ignored by all the authorities they are addressed to, saying this one and that one should not be in the ground, then he is issuing statements threatening people and claiming there are some “anti-football” fellows who are harming their programmes.
The tragedy is that he can lie just to put his point across and, on Wednesday, he was at his classic best, very best.
When the H-Metro journalists called him to confirm if the story that had leaked, that the Warriors had not been served their supper at the housing complex that they are using for their training camp and Gorowa had used his money to buy them food, Gwesela played his usual song:
“THESE REPORTS ARE TOTALLY UNTRUE. IF THERE ARE SUCH REPORTS, THEY ARE REPORTS FABRICATED BY PEOPLE WHO ARE JUST ANTI-FOOTBALL. OUR WARRIORS ARE WELL RESOURCED AND THERE IS NO WAY THAT WE, AS ZIFA, CAN FAIL TO FEED OUR TEAM WHEN WE HAVE CALLED THEM INTO CAMP.
“WE SUPPLY SOME OF THE FOOD AS AN ASSOCIATION WHILE THE LODGE ALSO SUPPLIES SOME. THAT IS THE ARRANGEMENT WE HAVE SO FAR.
“I HAVE BEEN COMMUNICATING WITH THE GUYS IN CAMP AND THERE IS NOTHING TO THAT EFFECT. THESE ARE JUST EFFORTS TO DISTRACT US AHEAD OF A VERY IMPORTANT TOURNAMENT.”
So, now that even the Sport, Arts and Culture Minister, Andrew Langa, has confirmed that there was an unfortunate incident at the Warriors’ training camp on Wednesday night, leading Gorowa to use his money to buy food for the players to have supper, what will Gwesela say?
Crucially, who are the “anti-football people” that Gwesela was talking about? Did he mean the coach who told the true story of what was happening in camp and, for having the bravery to say that, does that qualify him to be termed “anti-football?”
This wasn’t a story that had been leaked by faceless sources, this was a story that had been broken by the head coach himself, because he felt it was the right thing to do given the challenges that they were facing, and why was Gwesela so committed to not only lie, saying that everything was going according to plan, but also branding those who were singing a different tune as “anti-football people?”
Maybe, his outburst was directed at me, which is something that I have come to expect from people like him and maybe a good number of those that he works for, but what comforts me is that it has since been proven that he is the one who was probably “anti-football” in trying to hide the dire situation in the Warriors camp.
Having said that, though, I have to say Merry Christmas Xolisani Gwesela, the good thing is that your threats are not coming from a certain man who used to have a surname like yours, whose first name was Richard, who was at the heart of a reign of terror in the Midlands.
BEST-PAID FOOTBALL MANAGERS
1 Pep Guardiola, Bayern Munich, £14.8m (a year)
2 Jose Mourinho, Chelsea, £8.37m
3 Marcelo Lippi, Guangzhou, £8.34m
4 Arsene Wenger, Arsenal, £6.89m
5 Fabio Capello, Russia, £6.51m
6 Carlo Ancelotti, Real Madrid, £6.26m
7 David Moyes, Man United, £4.92m
8 Tata Martino, Barcelona, £4.5m
9 Jurgen Klopp, Borussia Dortmund, £3.59m
10 Manuel Pellegrini, Man City, £3.47m
11 Jorge Jesus, Benfica, £3.34m
12 Brendan Rodgers, Liverpool, £3.25m
13 Sam Allardyce, West Ham, £2.95m
13 Roy Hodgson, England, £2.95m
15 Roberto Mancini, Galatasaray, £2.92m
15 Rafa Benitez, Napoli, £2.92m
17 Luciano Spaletti, Zenit, £2.75m
18 Claudio Ranieri, Monaco, £2.5m
18 Laurent Blanc, PSG, £2.5m
18 Antonio Conte, Juventus, £2.5m
18 Cesare Prandelli, Italy, £2.5m
22 Massimiliano Allegri, Milan, £2.34m
23 Felipe Scolari, Brazil, £2.3m
24 Ottmar Hitzfeld, Switzerland, £2.17m
25 Mircea Lucescu, Shakhtar, £2.14m
26 Diego Simeone, Atletico Madrid, £2.09m
26 Harry Redknapp, QPR, £2.09m
26 Joachim Low, Germany, £2.09m
29 Walter Mazzarri, Inter Milan, £2m
30 Vecente del Bosque, Spain, £1.96m
To God Be The Glory!
Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chicharitoooooooooooooooooooooo!
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