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BY Thursday morning all the noise had died down, the outpouring of fury had gone, the screaming headlines had vanished and life, in Zimbabwe’s strange football world, was back to normal.In just four days Zimbabwe football had digested the Warriors’ meltdown at the National Sports Stadium, apportioned blame to the usual suspects, cursed its fate and, just like that, moved on.
No one in the world handles a football tragedy better than Zimbabweans, no one nurses a football heartbreak better than us, no one deals with a football hangover better than the people of this country and no one deals with football grief better than fans of the Warriors.
For the first time, in 32 years, the Warriors had fallen at the first hurdle in the Nations Cup qualifiers but, in just four days, all the anger that had erupted in the hour of failure was gone.
All the headlines that had captured the disaster had vanished and football was already starting to forget.
Two years ago, our last Nations Cup adventure had ended with Khama Billiat in tears in Luanda, barely able to compose himself to walk without a helping hand but, as we watched a talented young man cry for his country, it appears, we didn’t pick any lessons from that doomed mission.
And here we where, two years later, surveying the wreckage of another failed campaign, this time at the first hurdle, tears streaming down the cheeks of scores of heartbroken fans, a coach too distraught to face the media and a nation facing so many questions but with very few answers.
Even the media was also struggling for answers and by Thursday morning, just four days after the Tanzania Tornado hit and left a trail of damage throughout Zimbabwean football, the headlines had a familiar script — Injuries Stalk Bosso; Zuze Warns DeMbare; Bosso Wary of FC Platinum.
Where there had been Warriors, in the sports pages of the newspapers just a week ago, we now even had an obscure Third Division Chitungwiza club, which uses garbage trucks as transport to its matches and whose officials were making very wild predictions to become champions of the Premiership within the next three years.
That’s our football, isn’t it, and we are at our very best when we are in a hurry to try and forget a disaster, and they come with frustrating regularity in our national game, and we try to pretend that it didn’t happen, it wasn’t us who featured in that humiliation, it was all a bad dream and when we woke up, the following day, the world was still a beautiful place to live in.
Nothing had changed, after all dancehall music was still dominating our radio waves, H-Metro was still full of stories about Soul Jah Love and his acrimonious split with his manager Courage Zikhali, the paternity dispute between Alick Macheso and his estranged wife Tafadzwa was still to be resolved and Tryson was still behaving every bit like a rebel while Sulu was emerging as the good diplomat.
Soon, the domestic Premiership was going to return and the Highlanders fans will switch focus to their team’s flying start in the championship race, and an unbeaten run to brag about, the Dynamos fans will chase the dream of a fourth straight league title, the CAPS United fans will be hoping that the Green Machine can end their awful away run and stage a spirited battle for the league title.
We were all going to retreat to the comfort that the Premiership provides, in its feel-good world where a national tragedy can’t be scripted, where our tribal instincts find refugee and space to be to be explored and displayed in their full repertoire, where our teams have 30 chances to be champions or avoid relegation.
Soon, the headlines on the back pages would be about DeMbare and their glory hunt for a fourth straight league title, to match the Immortals of the turn of the ‘80s, and back at their club the likes of George Chigova and Partson Jaure will feel really loved and the National Sports Stadium will feel like home once again and not the prison it became, as missiles rained from disappointed fans, after the match on Sunday.
Soon, the headlines on the back pages would be about Bosso and their glory hunt, eight years after they last won the league title, in a barren spell that coincidentally matches the time that the Warriors have spent in isolation since their last dance with the Nations Cup heavyweights in Egypt in 2006.
We beat Ghana back then, on their way to the World Cup in Germany, with Benjani and Cephas Chimedza on target for us, and while the Black Stars are on their way again to the World Cup in Brazil next week, we find ourselves nursing the heartbreak of being eliminated from a 2015 Nations Cup whose qualifiers haven’t started in earnest.
Oh, by the way, soon the World Cup is going to start in Brazil and we are going to pick our adopted countries — some people would be Elephants, others would be Super Eagles, others would be Black Stars, others would Indomitable Lions and others would be Samba Boys, some will follow Luis Suarez while others will follow Ozil — and, for a month, we will find alternative entertainment.
The tragedy against the Taifa Stars swiftly forgotten, conveniently relegated from the memory bank, after all, we are Warriors, no one in this world nurses a football heartbreak better than us, no one on this globe deals with football grief better than us.
My Worst Fears That Sadly Came To Pass
Sharuko On Saturday, The Saturday Herald, May 24, 2014
Last Sunday in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania beat us 1-0 in a 2015 Nations Cup qualifier to thrust themselves into a strong position and pushed us onto the edge facing the grim possibility of completing our worst Nations Cup campaign in history.
What surprised me was the pace with which we tried to move away from what had happened in Tanzania, to pretend as if we were not sitting on a time bomb that could explode, with frightening consequences for our national game, both in the immediate and long term, in the event we don’t get it right in Harare next Sunday.
By Wednesday, just three days after our loss in Dar es Salaam, the back pages of our mainstream national newspapers had turned to the domestic Premiership — after all champions Dynamos were back in action, and debate about what had happened in Tanzania and, CRUCIALLY, THE TRAGEDY THAT IT COULD REPRESENT IN THE EVENT WE FAIL TO WIPE OUT THE DEFICIT, had disappeared from the pages that mattered.
Like every Zimbabwean, I’m praying that we beat Tanzania next Sunday by any margin that enables us to qualify for the next round where another duel against Mozambique looms — just a year after we slugged it out in World Cup qualifiers that ended in a stalemate.
But I also live in the real world to know that a 0-1 defeat away from home is a tricky result, in a two-legged contest, because it gives Tanzania not only the lead but the benefits that will come with scoring an away goal in Harare, which will count twice, in the event of an aggregate draw.
Players will tell you that the toughest matches are those when a 2-0 lead, even in time added on, remains a fragile cushion, playing while carrying that extra burden that comes with knowing that if the opposition score, from one free-kick or one corner kick it’s over, the pressure that it brings and, crucially, the mistakes that come with all that.
Of course, home should provide certain comforts, the fans behind your cause, familiar surroundings and the psychological boost that comes with defending your fortress, but it also comes with a heavy load, especially in such games where you are playing catch up, where every minute counts, where every chance lost could be defining and, when pressure starts building in the terraces, it usually has a huge effect on the players.
THEREIN LIES OUR MONUMENTAL CHALLENGE AND WE HAVEN’T DONE EXCEPTIONALLY WELL, IN TWO-LEGGED TIES, IN RECENT YEARS TO GIVE OURSELVES THE FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY THAT COME NEXT SUNDAY WE WILL, WITHOUT ANY DOUBT, TURN THIS INTO MISSION POSSIBLE AND THE TAIFA STARS WON’T BE SHINING AFTER 5PM THAT DAY.
In the past four years, in which we have ventured into two failed Nations Cup campaigns and a doomed World Cup campaign, we have played SIXTEEN international matches in these two big tournaments and only TWICE, in those matches, did we end up with a better aggregate score than our opponents —against Liberia and Burundi.
When you break it all down for analysis you will see that we have played eight countries during that time – Egypt, Cape Verde, Mali, Guinea, Mozambique, Burundi, Liberia and Angola – and in 12 of these games the aggregate score would favour our opponents.
Egypt (6-3); Cape Verde (2-1); Guinea (2-0); Mali (2-2 but the Eagles would have been in a better position because of the away goal they scored at Rufaro); Mozambique (1-1 but the Mambas would have been in a better position because of the away goal they scored here); Angola (3-3, they won on the away goals rule).
We failed, in those four matches to qualify for the 2013 Nations Cup finals in South Africa, to outscore our two opponents on aggregate even though one of them was Burundi, whom we beat on away goals rule after a 2-2 draw while Angola beat us on away goals rule after a 3-3 draw.
Crucially, all the key figures whose goals kept us going, even though we ultimately failed to get to the Promised Land, in those matches against Burundi and Angola — Knowledge Musona (two), Khama Billiat (one) and Archford Gutu (one) — are unavailable for the tie against Tanzania.
We have only scored two or more goals at the National Sports Stadium TWICE, in the past four years, against the Pharaohs (TWO), in what was a dead rubber for us, and against Liberia (THREE), when we were no longer in control of our affairs, while on the only two occasions that we went to Rufaro, in pressure and tougher make-or-break games against Angola (THREE) and Mali (TWO), we appeared to be more settled.
Crucially, and this is what sends shivers down my spine, we have conceded in all ALL our last FOUR home Nations Cup/World Cup assignments against Guinea, Mozambique, Egypt and Angola.
I Couldn’t Help But Feel For Those Special Fans
Where in the world have you seen a national football side that never delivers but is so loved by its fans, a team that has only been to two Nations Cup finals in 34 years but remains very popular, a team that failed to win even a single game in six World Cup qualifiers but, still, wooed 55 000 plus fans in the same stadium where it was beaten by Guinea and thrashed by Egypt in its last two World Cup matches in their home?
Where in the world have you seen a team, whose innocence has been stolen by a damaging match-fixing controversy that never seems to end, continue to enjoy the patronage of thousands of its fans they even fill its home ground even in a match that comes against the depressing background of a defeat in Tanzania?
Where in the world have you seen a team that loses to Tanzania but two weeks later gets a full-house, of plus 55 000 fans at its home match against the same opponents, all of them coming carrying hopes that their Warriors will spring to life come the decisive moment?
Where in the world have you seen a team that still considers just qualifying for the Nations Cup its finest hour, when its major regional rivals and neighbours to the north and south have already won that tournament, remain such a massive box-office draw card for millions of its fans?
Only the Warriors can have such a special group of fans and that special bond was there for everyone to see at the National Sports Stadium on Sunday as a huge army of the team’s supporters converged at the giant venue and rekindled memories of the hey days of the Dream Team when it was routine to have a capacity crowd at that ground.
But, in the wake of the team’s doomed 2015 Nations Cup finals, especially the heartbreaking way in which they collapsed right in front of those fans with a patchy performance pregnant with mistakes and terribly short on imagination, one fears we might have blown a huge opportunity to restore love and build trust between the team and its fans.
For me, this is what amplified the pain — the golden opportunity that fate had presented us to rebuild the bond of trust between the national team and their long-suffering fans and to revive the romantic attachment between the Warriors and their supporters.
If we had succeeded in this game, you would have been guaranteed that the next match, against Mozambique, would attract a full house and if the Taifa Stars and the Mambas, who are rather small boys on the continent, can draw a capacity crowd at the giant stadium, you can only imagine the mayhem that would have followed the arrival of the Zambians in town.
Interestingly, when the Dream Team was at the peak of its athletic powers, one of their iconic duels was against Chipolopolo, during the ’94 Nations Cup finals, and somehow fate had thrown us a golden opportunity to relive those hey days, with a possible clash against the Zambians if we had qualified, but somehow we conspired to blow it away.
Ian Gorowa will look back at this game and see that, in a number of areas, he could have done better in terms of the choice of men he sent into this big battle, the replacements he chose and the combinations he tried to apply.
He was probably right to retain faith in his five men at the back, once Carlington Nyadombo had been ruled out by injury, and on reflection he knows it was two uncharacteristic defensive mistakes by Eric Chipeta, who probably would not have played in central defence had Nyadombo been available, and a poor judgment by his ‘keeper, beaten at his near post for the second goal, which were at the heart of this monumental collapse.
But, away from the soft goals that we conceded, what hurt me the most was the inability of our foreign-based players to seize the initiative, the provide the leadership that this team and its fans wanted, to provide the spark that we expected from them the way Knowledge Musona has done countless times, the way Khama Billiat did at Rufaro against Angola and the way King Peter used to do again and again.
No one, among the five foreign-based players we threw in our starting XI either as midfielders or in the forward line — Willard Katsande, Ovidy Karuru, Denver Mukamba, Cuthbert Malajila and Edward Sadomba — did anything of substance to provide the X-Factor that the fans in the stadium, and the nation at large, expected from them.
The home-based players are back at their clubs, life goes on doesn’t it, and soon they will be celebrating a goal and drawing a winning bonus, the foreign-based players have gone on holiday and, soaking the sun on sandy beaches, they will soon forget about the meltdown at the National Sports Stadium and start preparing for a new season.
Some of our football leaders will go to Brazil and watch the World Cup opening match between the hosts and Croatia and, on the sandy beaches of Rio, they can afford to forget about a meltdown that happened a world away across the other side of the Atlantic.
But, for the loyal and long-suffering fans, there is nothing to wipe away the memory of that meltdown at the giant stadium, the humiliation at the hands of Tanzania, the horror at unfolded in the place they call home and every happy Nigerian fan you will see waving his national team flag in Brazil, spare a thought for thousands of long-suffering Warriors fans who can only watch from a distance.
Their pain won’t end with the World Cup finals but, soon, the 2015 Nations Cup group games will start and for every Mozambican or Tanzanian fan you will see deriving a lot of joy in supporting their team in this adventure, spare a thought for thousands of Warriors fans who can only watch from a distance.
All the time the fans are the ones who carry the biggest load of our national game’s failure and, strangely, they are the constituency that have absolutely no say when the time comes for decisions to be made on who should be the game’s leaders.
Good Old Gattuso Finds A New Job
Six months ago Gennaro Gattuso made headlines around the globe when a prosecutor in Italy revealed that he was being investigated as part of a network that allegedly fixed matches in Serie A and B.
If the World Cup winner was a Zimbabwean player or coach he would have been suspended and, probably banned, even without due process being followed and Norman Mapeza remains an example of this shoddy justice delivery system.
This week Gattuso was named head coach of Greek side OFI Crete but Mapeza remains stuck in limbo, unable to get a job because no one has dared to tell him he is free, and he hasn’t only lost two years but his image has been dented too.
In contrast, Juventus coach Antonio Conte won the Serie A title last season even after serving 10 months of a ban in a match-fixing case but no one at zifa has the courtesy to advise Mapeza, whom they said they banned for six months, of his freedom.
Last Saturday, Thomas Sweswe was complaining in the Daily News that two years after paying US$6 000 for his appeal to be heard, zifa haven’t come back to him with a verdict, people are beginning to forget about Guthrie Zhokinyi even though fifa said he wasn’t treated fairly and, maybe, when you have all these haunted spirits floating around, even beating Tanzania at home becomes Mission Impossible.
To God Be The Glory!
Come on Mexico!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chicharitoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
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Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter