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Our Dear Warriors,
SO, finally, the day arrived yesterday — when you had to leave all of us behind, including your parents, your wives and girlfriends, your children, your brothers and sisters and your friends, as you embarked on this mission to fly our national flag at the 2019 AFCON finals.
Along the way, you will have a stopover in South Africa, for the little business that comes with the defence of the COSAFA Cup, in Nigeria, for a high-profile friendly international and, finally, in Egypt for the Mother of All assignments at the Nations Cup showcase.
Two years have passed since your captain Knowledge Musona kick-started this campaign, with an historic hat-trick at the National Sports Stadium, in a crushing 3-0 victory over Liberia and, this weekend, you will reunite with your inspirational skipper for the final battles.
We have marched with you all the way, even when others doubted you, because you are all that matters to us, when it comes to football, the team whose fate, results and trials and tribulations are more important to us than even the outcome of last night’s Europa League final or Saturday’s UEFA Champions League final.
Admittedly, there are a lot of better and more competitive teams than you, both on the continent and in the world, but they don’t appeal to us the way your charm does, they don’t bond with us the way you guys do and they don’t relate to us the way you do.
Some have called us mad, because you don’t seem to win anything except the COSAFA Cup, but we are comfortable with such labels, others have called us deranged, because they say we support a team that never qualifies beyond the group stages of the AFCON finals, but we don’t mind such insults.
The more they insult us, the more they mock us and the more they create sickening jokes in which we are the common denominator, the more the bond that unites us gets stronger and the more that we actually love you because that’s all that matters.
The other day they were saying, look, they support a team led by a player whose Belgian club was relegated, a country whose other key player remains trapped in Super Diski, a people without even one player playing actively in the English Premiership, the Spanish La Liga, the Italian Serie A, the German Bundesliga and the French Ligue 1.
They said look, their oldest Premiership club is languishing in relegation trouble, and their biggest football club has become a punching bag, even for those teams that were initially formed to provide some college students with a vehicle to play football in their spare time.
But, now and again, we have told them we don’t care because you are whom we are, as a people, as a country, and as you embark on this journey, we want to assure you, as we have done over the years, that we are walking with you and repeat our calls for you to represent us with pride.
To give it everything that you have, because that is what matters, whether we win or lose, to always remember that you have been assigned this mountain to show others that it can be moved.
To go out there and remind the world that Warriors don’t just show up to get everything they want, but they show up to give everything they have and if you play for the flag on the front of your shirts, they will definitely remember the names on the back of your golden jerseys.
That the strength of our team is in each of its individual members, from the guy who will manage your kit to the fellow who will provide you with your security, and that the strength of each member is what makes you such a formidable team.
You know very well that, for us to be great, we need to win the games we aren’t supposed to win and that for us to finish first, we must first try to finish the race and it’s better to win 1-0 ten times, because that’s what makes champions in such tournaments, than to win 10-0 once because you will be labelled a fluke.
They say, in this world, if you are afraid of failure, you don’t deserve to be successful and the difference between a successful team, and others, is not a lack of strength or the lack of knowledge, but the lack of a will to go the extra mile and to bring down the barriers.
Bill Shankly, the legendary Liverpool manager, told us to always aim for the sky and we will reach the ceiling, aim for the ceiling and you’ll stay on the floor and it’s important, as you start this mission, to ask not what your teammates can do for you, but what you can do for your teammates.
Remember, it is not the will to win that matters because, just about everyone has that in this world and at the AFCON tournament you are going, but it is the will to prepare to win such tournaments that makes a difference and it’s better to fail, while aiming high, than to succeed, while aiming low.
They have been telling you of such superstars like Mohamed Salah and, it’s true, they exist and they are deadly, but hard work can beat talent when talent fails to work hard and it’s impossible to beat them, even in their backyard.
After all, the more difficult the victory, the greater the happiness in winning and don’t forget that such tournaments create those relationships where people will gather together in bars and in their houses, a whole country being whipped into a wave of emotion to care about its football team.
Jere Longman, who has been writing for the New York Times’ sports section since 1993, once wrote that “life is like a game of soccer.
“You need goals. If there are no goals in your life then you can’t win.”
He said “it is a fluid game of systematised chaos that, no matter how tightly scripted by coaches, cannot be regulated any more than information can be truly controlled on the Internet and the vision of a champion is someone who is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion when nobody else is watching.”
That’s what we expect from you, on this mission, because football is just an incredible game, sometimes so incredible, it’s unbelievable, and you are all that we have and all that we support.
The ball is now in your court and you have only two choices — either to be successful or to die trying.
Your All-Weather-Friends At Herald Sport
ROBSON SHARUKO, COLLIN MATIZA, GRACE CHINGOMA, EDDIE CHIKAMHI, ELLINA MHLANGA, TADIOUS MANYEPO, TAKUDZWA CHITSIGA, CLOUD FUSIRE, HANNAH CHIKEYA, MILDRED MBIRA, EVANS DZORE, DYTON MUPAWAENDA, PRIVILEGE CHIKWAYA AND JAMES MAKOMA
This motivational letter was written after consulting a number of such motivational speeches delivered by the likes of Bill Shankly, PaulBear, Tom Landry and Jere Longman to name, but a few.
Online Reporter