dyton mupawaenda
Sharuko on Saturday
SO, finally, it took the SEVENTH game, in the SEVENTH month since our first game from suspension and, on the eve of the SEVENTH month of the year, for the Warriors to win a game.
It took the one competitive game, which the ZIFA bosses didn’t attend en-masse in what has been a grand feasting pilgrimage, for the Warriors to finally find a way to beat an opponent.
Freed from the bondage of a ZIFA leadership, whose sickening interference now includes calling players who should play for the national team, the Warriors finally managed to win a match.
Without the disruptive shadow of Lincoln Mutasa and his crew, whose mere presence has been a bad omen for the Warriors, our boys even managed a clean sheet in the win against Comoros on Thursday.
In their last two matches, in the same country earlier this month, the Warriors had conceded FIVE goals in two matches, including two goals against Lesotho, in World Cup qualifiers.
That was consistent with their two games at the Four Nations friendly tournament in Malawi in March this year where the Warriors conceded FIVE goals, in two matches against Zambia and Kenya.
So, any argument that this was just a COSAFA Cup game and we should not read much into it can be deemed as misplaced, especially for a team which, even in friendly matches, was now letting in goals with alarming regularity.
I have been very clear from day one that I am no longer really interested in the Warriors winning the COSAFA Cup because I now feel that using this tournament to develop players is more beneficial than bringing the trophy home.
So, this means I would be happier if we had our Under-17s or Under-20s playing at this COSAFA Cup, and being thrashed by four goals or whatever, than winning the tournament with players unlikely to ever play for the Warriors in AFCON or World Cup qualifiers.
Investing into the future, just like going to the gym, isn’t an easy thing but it is necessary and, in football, it might mean getting embarrassed now for you to enjoy success later.
But, that victory should not be allowed to fool us that, at last, Mutasa and his crew from hell have found a way to take our football to the next level.
Admittedly, it came against a decent Comoros side who find themselves top of their World Cup qualifying group which has Mali, Madagascar, Central African Republic, Chad and Ghana.
Somehow, Mutasa and his team decided this was the right platform to introduce a kit, which looked more like one used by the Ghanaians, than any which the Warriors have used in their 44 years in the jungles of international football.
With that shade of black, this kit, which even the guys at PUMA will disown it, can’t pass the test, even for the worst standards of copycats.
It was hard to recognise our boys in what was an insult to who we are as a people.
When you can’t get a proper kit for your team, and then spend money loading the technical team with your friends you end up with as many members of the technical committee as players.
We have a bloated technical team of 18 people in South Africa, which is exactly the same number of players that we have down there one would assume ZIFA wanted every player to have his member of the technical supporting staff.
I’m pretty sure that we have broken a record as the first team, in the history of football, to have the same number of technical staff members as the players themselves at a regional tournament.
National team kits are the identity of the team and are not changed just like that and you don’t go down shopping in flea markets in South Africa to get a national team kit for goodness sake.
You would expect it’s something Mutasa knows, even with his limited knowledge of today’s football, that it was the reason why the Dynamos he used to play for never took to the field in a green-and-white or black-and-white kit.
THE WORLD OF THE DEMBARE DINOSAURS
This week, a fine young man who was beginning to show signs that he was one of the emerging crop of leaders we could invest in terms of those who will guide our game in the future, died.
Norman Maroto was a good guy, his fine qualities rooted in his humility, a young man who was on a mission to make a change to the game he loved and he was beginning to make a significant impact in whatever he was touching.
This is a guy who, in his short time in the corridors of football leadership, was now sharing notes with the likes of Arsene Wenger which, in itself, is a testimony of the substance that he had.
Like his mentor and former teammate Desmond Maringwa, the man I believe is on the right path to one day become the ZIFA boss we have all been waiting for, Maroto was cut from a different cloth and was an oasis of hope in an ocean of hopelessness.
That ocean is dominated by the likes of Mutasa, a man whose arrival as ZIFA boss was greeted with a lot of goodwill before he lost his way, destroyed by his failure to provide leadership and consumed by the sum total of his fatal shortcomings.
I now call them the DeMbare Dinosaurs and Bernard Marriot, the man who has dragged Dynamos into the abyss, is one of these characters from the past whose leadership limitations have had a severe negative impact on our game.
In my little book, these two men, with a DeMbare connection and who somehow share the same initials, LM for Lincoln Mutasa and Lusengo Marriot, have inflicted more harm on our national game than all the other people combined, in the past year.
My argument is that as long as Dynamos is not competitive football is doomed in this country because a healthy DeMbare, just a healthy Highlanders, are key ingredients in the success of our game on the domestic front.
Right now, the average attendance figures at Dynamos home matches have gone down to about 3000 fans, less than the number of people watching Simba Bhora when they are playing at home in Shamva.
The thousands of fans, who used to make the weekly pilgrimage to Rufaro to watch the Glamour Boys have disappeared, the majority of them frustrated by a club they no longer recognise as their own team, one that has been converted into a family’s pet project.
The Dynamos constituency was built on a foundation of success and when the team becomes so poor that its only victories, in the first half of the season are against the newly-promoted sides, then the fans just decide to stay away from this circus.
I don’t know how Marriot isn’t seeing that as he continues to drag what used to be the people’s team, before it was converted into a family property, down the road to its eventual destruction.
Anyone who tells you that local football can be successful, something which is important before we start dreaming of having success on the international scene, without a competitive Dynamos will be lying to you.
Yes, it happens in other countries but we have a unique scenario in this country and it’s important that Dynamos, just like Highlanders, fire on all cylinders for our local football to be in a healthy shape.
Sadly, the Glamour Boys have been struggling to come out of their hospital bed where they have been kept alive, in the past decade, by a combination of life-prolonging machines and their situation looks very bleak.
That the Glamour Boys are not is largely because of Marriot and it’s sad that the yet another member of the DeMbare Dinosaurs club, Mutasa, has also spent the past year trying to drag our national game to its grave.
There is a glimmer of hope though.
Today could be the end of the Mutasa experiment and, according to reports, he will be replaced as head of ZIFA after a year in which he clocked more kilometres, travelling around the world, than doing anything significant at the association.
FIFA will probably have to explain to us, in their apology, how they ended up settling for a man whose last romance, with real football leadership, had come 36 years before they gave him the number one job in the local game’s administration structures.
They will also need to explain to us how Mutasa, who was rejected by ZIFA councillors in his bid to become association vice-president in 2015, when Omega Sibanda won the contest 34-23, suddenly became good enough to be the president.
Those ZIFA polls in 2015 ushered in two young administrators – Edzai Kasinauyo and Piraishe Mabhena – into the executive amid hope that this new blood will help transform our game.
Sadly, they are both late – Edzai died two years later in Johannesburg while Mabhena died three years ago.
As fate would have it, they were both just 42.
Yesterday, we lost Maroto, at the age of 40, yet another member of the youth brigade we were hoping would change the dynamics in the way our football is being run.
Dynamos should build a retirement home for their dinosaurs so that young men, with fresh ideas, can come along and make a difference.
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 Chegutu Pirates!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Zaireeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
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