SUPER MARIO DOESN’T OWN THE WARRIORS

Sharuko On Saturday

THE temptation this week was to dedicate this blog on CAF and the mobsters, disguised as legal experts, who tried to stage the biggest heist in the history of football.

Those anti-football old fellows who came up with that outrageous decision, plucked straight from hell and scripted by the Devil himself, to try and rob an AFCON trophy in Dakar.

Those morons who came up with a stinker in which they tried to smuggle Morocco back onto the AFCON winners’ podium and, through the back door, end the country’s 50 years wait for the trophy.

For the record, Morocco have only won the AFCON once, back in 1976, when the tournament featured only eight teams at the finals.

Admittedly, half-a-century is a very long time, especially when you finished fourth at the last World Cup finals and you believe that it’s your divine right to be champions of Africa again.

Shame on all of them, and everything they represent, for trying to drag our football back into the Stone Age with their dubious move which looked more like an AI deception than a real decision from a group of legal experts.

You just can’t, with the stroke of a pen, try to deceive us to forget that Ibrahim Diaz took a last-gasp penalty, which would have won Morocco the trophy, and missed.

Yes, we have had precedents where results of matches have been overturned in the past.

We know that Zimbabwe’s 1-2 World Cup defeat in Cairo in 1993 was nullified by FIFA because of the hostile environment in which Reinhard Fabisch and Bruce Grobbelaar were hit by flying missiles.

But violence is different from what unfolded in Rabat during the AFCON final in January and, once the referee decided to continue the match after the Senegalese returned, the outcome couldn’t be contested.

What could be punished was the foolish reaction, and wild behaviour of the Senegalese, through fines and suspensions of the major culprits, especially the coach, and not through overturning the result of the match.

How do you punish someone like Sadio Mane, who did not leave the pitch in protest and was very instrumental in getting his teammates back onto the field, by trying to take away a medal he earned with both sweat and dignity?

Why give a racist like Jamie Carragher ammunition to keep preaching his Satanic verses that AFCON is a waste of time when it represents the Holy Grail for all of us on this continent?

When England still had real footballers, before the likes of Carragher came along and turned the Three Lions into global misfits, they reached the quarter-finals of the ’86 World Cup.

Only Diego Maradona’s Hand of God could beat them and, without that, it’s very likely Bobby Robson and Gary Lineker would have powered the Three Lions to a second World Cup title.

But, despite this clear case of injustice, England accepted their fate, the man and the team which robbed them went on to be champions and football, just like life, continued.

That was in 1986.

We are now in 2026, forty years have passed, Lineker is still alive, both Bobby Robson and Maradona are dead, Argentina have just added another World Cup and the English, just like the Moroccans, are still searching for another major title.

That’s the way football, just like life, goes on.

The English didn’t complain to have their loss overturned, even though there was clear and graphic evidence that they were cheated, FIFA didn’t open processes for such a complaint and the tournament ended in style.

A massive crowd of 114,600 fans converged at the AZTECA in Mexico City for the final and watched Argentina edge Germany 3-2 to win the trophy.

WE NEED ANSWERS AS TO WHY MUNETSI IS BEING FROZEN OUT

I could have gone on and on about this farce, but it’s important not to lose focus and let such international events deflect our attention from events at home which, to me, matters more than those in foreign lands.

The Warriors, one of the worst performing teams at the AFCON finals which have now been dragged into the mud, are back in camp this weekend as they prepare for the Four Nations tournament in Botswana.

I have to salute ZIFA president Nqobile Magwizi for making full use of this FIFA window for internationals.

This is the kind of leadership that we want, someone who prioritises such opportunities and uses them to try and give the coach as much time as possible to look at his players, and combinations, without the pressure of big game situations.

It has not been an easy start for Nqobile, but I like him and I feel that in him we have a ZIFA leader who, if given the right support can, in the long run, make a huge difference in our game.

I also feel that Mario is a good coach for the Warriors and he, too, should be given as much support as possible to ensure that he completes the project that he has in mind.

What I don’t like, though, is Mario’s stubbornness which, in my humble opinion, appears premised on his flawed belief that he is a superior human being to us simply because he is from Europe and we are Africans.

His ill-treatment of Marshall Munetsi is as stinking as that decision by those CAF mobsters who tried to steal the AFCON trophy from Senegal under the guise that they were making a competent judicial decision.

What is even an aberration has to be Mario’s foolish belief that he doesn’t need to answer to the football fans in this country, myself included, as to why he keeps one of the Warriors best three players, out of the team.

He behaves as if he is our football emperor and somehow he forgets that just four months ago, he was nobody in our game, and had just been fired by Liberia for failing to take them to the AFCON finals.

MARIO DOESN’T OWN THE WARRIORS

The Liberians took him after he was fired in Malawi.

Of course, I fully understand and appreciate that Mario, as the head coach, has the responsibility to choose the Warriors he wants to use in his team.

Fair and fine.

What is not fair and fine is for him to do things, like the humiliation of Munetsi, without an explanation as to why he is doing that. It’s not his team, it’s our team, he coaches it on our behalf, the same way that those who play for this team, the likes of Munetsi and company, do so on our behalf.

We employ him because ZIFA belongs to us and those who run the association are doing so on our behalf.

That is why they are voted into office by men and women who are supposed to represent our interests at district, provincial and regional level, and they can be kicked out of office, just like what happened to the old leadership, when they fail to deliver.

Like any other employee, Mario has to tell us, his employers, why he is making certain decisions which look to have been borrowed from hell and which, in the long run, have a danger of affecting the success of our team.

If he was choosing players for his Romanian national team, he would not have heard us question anything, even if he left out the best players because we really don’t care about who plays for that team and its results.

Mario, himself, would have questioned the Romania coach if he left out Gheorghe Hagi, the man affectionately known as the ‘Maradona of the Carpathians’, from the national team during the ‘80s and ‘90s.

The reason is simple – he was the best Romanian footballer then and is their best footballer of all-time.

That is the very same reason why, when he makes a decision to leave out a player like Munetsi, probably the only Warrior who will walk into the Senegalese team, Mario needs to tell us why he is doing that.

His contract with the Warriors runs out in November, if it is not extended.

But Munetsi’s contract with the Warriors is rooted in blood, it doesn’t end and even after his playing career is over, there are other opportunities for him in the team.

It’s our job as the media to ask questions, on behalf of the fans and on behalf of Munetsi, as to why one of our best two players is being frozen from our national team.

After all, it was our noise which helped Mario end his diabolical decision to keep Tawanda Maswanhise out of the team at the AFCON finals and, in that one game he played from the start, showed us that our coach’s science is flawed.

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!

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