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MAHLENGWE ON SATURDAY
I SAID it, with five games to go, that the championship race was done and dusted, the game was long over and trophy was already packed neatly into DeMbare’s cabinet, wherever they keep their silverware, given that they don’t have a home.
Of course, many supporters of teams that are rivals of the Glamour Boys, didn’t like my bold prediction but they couldn’t say anything, at least in the public, because history favoured the dominant Boys in Blue.
One person who really wished I would be made to swallow back my prediction was my young brother, Tafadzwa, a staunch CAPS United supporter who hates Dynamos with as much passion as he loves his Green Machine.
He kept that newspaper safe, I don’t know where, just in case Dynamos would falter and he waited for my date with destiny and how he would have the last laugh.
His best moment, on the domestic football scene this year was when the referee blew to signal the end of the game between Dynamos and ZPC Kariba, in Week 29 of the programme, when the newcomers got the stunning result that put them firmly in the driving seat in this championship race.
There he was, in the VIP Section of the National Sports Stadium, enjoying his Finest Hour this year, feeling so good he could even afford to sing in his moment of joy, and rubbing salt into the wounds of every DeMbare fan that he came across.
What his Green Machine had failed to provide him, in five years of failing to beat the Glamour Boys, in 29 games in a year in which their bid to end nine years of waiting for a league title had once again ended in failure, had all been provided by ZPC Kariba in just 90 minutes.
Football can be very enjoyable and, in minutes and hours after ZPC Kariba’s win over Dynamos all but gave them the league title, I saw a young brother at peace with himself, now that all the torture that he had suffered, in the past few years, was gone.
That he is an Arsenal fan, and all what has happened with the Gunners in recent years, hasn’t helped really.
Well, if only he knew that this game, as beautiful as it felt that day when all his dreams came true and his adopted team ZPC Kariba basked in the glory of their big win over Dynamos, could also turn very ugly, very quickly.
And, as fate might have it, it was his team, CAPS United, who were going to play a very vital role in helping Dynamos, in the final weekend of the league programme, to be champions for the fourth straight time.
Although things didn’t exactly go the way I had predicted, in terms of how Dynamos would win it, the point remains that I got the outcome right — that after everything had been said and done, the title would remain with the Glamour Boys.
And who can argue that the feat also cemented Callisto Pasuwa’s status as the king of Zimbabwe football, the giant of the game in the post 2010-era, a gentle genius who has pushed everyone into the shade.
It is surprising that over the past three seasons, 2011 to 2013, Pasuwa only won the Coach of the Year award just once, just once, when he has dominated the scene in each of those years.
Incredibly, in those three seasons, Pasuwa won eight trophies, at least three titles in each season, including the big one, the league championship in each of those years, and still some people felt that he wasn’t the best coach that year.
This season, he has gone a step further and bagged four trophies — Bob90 Super Cup, TM Pick ‘n’ Pay Challenge Cup, Castle Lager Premiership and, just this last weekend, the Gushungo Cup.
He would certainly have won the Mbada Diamonds Cup, I’m so sure about this, if the tournament had been played this year and not shifted to the beginning of next season.
So, in four seasons, Pasuwa has won 12 trophies, including four league championships, in his first four seasons in charge of the Glamour Boys, and that’s a great record that no other coach, who sat in the hottest seat in Zimbabwean football, can match.
A COACH IN A CLASS OF HIS OWN
No other coach, in Zimbabwe, has ever won four league titles on the trot and we can even go back to the start of our league championships in 1962, which is 52 years ago, and we won’t find any coach who managed to do that.
There is no argument that this guy is special.
How they are not going to give him Coach of the Year award this season, I got to know this from my colleague Robson Sharuko, whose extensive network of contacts in our game gives him the privilege to know things before we even know them, I wonder?
Honestly speaking, there is no other coach who is going to surpass what Pasuwa has achieved in his short stint as coach, worse still, working under the kind of pressure that one gets in coaching Dynamos.
It’s highly unlikely and I pray for God to give me enough years to live so that I witness that record being broken.
Surprisingly, even with such a flowery record, the guy hasn’t been given the recognition and respect he deserves.
Maybe, it is because of the way he has been winning the Premiership titles — three have been on goal difference and all on the last day of the season.
If you would ask me I would say that makes him even more special because he has proved to be a master of nerves.
Many would have broken down at some point.
Pasuwa has remained calm in the most difficult of circumstances when odds were against him.
Some say he is a lucky fellow.
Many coaches would want his luck if that was the case.
I certainly do.
But what I know is that you build your own luck.
He is not one of the most striking personalities you can ever meet in football and in life.
He is a bit on the shy side, an introvert to some extent who even finds it difficult to answer his phone, but he has proved to be the most effective coach in Zimbabwe’s modern day football.
In short, Pasuwa is a football genius, unmatched at the moment.
Certainly, he has set his place in Zimbabwe’s football archives.
No one can argue that he has set an almost unbeatable bar for any coach for this decade.
The crown for the Coach of the Decade for years 2011 to 2020 is already his and I don’t see anyone coming close.
The sad part is Pasuwa won’t be on the Dynamos bench next season.
He announced on the last day of the league campaign that he is taking time out at Dynamos after four years of unparalleled success.
Coincidentally, his contract was expiring at the end of the season and the Dynamos executive on Monday gave him a letter to the effect that he would need to apply for the job, just like any other candidate.
To think that a record-breaking coach would be required to re-apply for his job defies logic and raises stink on the part of the executive.
All the suspicions that the Dynamos family had on the frosty relationship between Pasuwa and the Kenny Mubaiwa-led executive have literally been confirmed.
They can deny it all they want but it is clear they no longer wanted the coach to continue.
No one in his right mind would wait for a three-time league championship winning coach’s contract to expire before they try to tie him down for longer.
If it were me, it was going to be a contract for a lifetime, until he decides that he doesn’t want anymore.
But not for Mubaiwa and company.
They went on and asked Pasuwa to reapply for his job.
What an insult?
For all the work and the glamour that he has brought to their team, this is the way they choose to reward him.
Shame on you guys.
For God’s sake, give the man the respect and honour he deserves.
WHAT REALLY DID THIS EXECUTIVE ACHIEVE?
It is clear that while Pasuwa was ruling on the field of play, Mubaiwa and company have been sitting on their laurels and only basking in the glory that the coach was bringing to the team.
In the past four years that Mubaiwa and his team have been at the helm of the club, its financial standing has been sliding.
Now we won’t have Champions League soccer next season because the team cannot foot the bill that comes with the African safari.
Nonsense!
Remove the BancABC sponsorship deal that Farai Munetsi’s team left behind and you will see a Dynamos relying on gate-takings like all the other bankrupt community clubs.
And that has proven to be unsustainable.
It is clear that the current executive is bankrupt on ideas of taking advantage of the brand called Dynamos and turning it into financial powerhouse for the club.
In short, these guys have failed.
They have failed the coach, the players, themselves and the huge Dynamos followers who have been with the team through thick and thin.
The sad part was that they had to wait until the last minute to try and negotiate with BancABC for next season’s Champions League package as if they didn’t know they had equal chances to win the league title again.
They should have known better, especially with the way they struggled to find a sponsor last season, again at the last minute, that their main job this season was to find ways of funding the African safari expedition.
But not our Mubaiwa and company.
Maybe I am being too harsh on the guys and there were some activities that they were undertaking behind the scenes.
If that is the case, I wait to see them come to fruition now that they have managed to frustrate a record-breaking coach, Callisto Pasuwa, into leaving his beloved Dynamos.
Suspicion of underhand dealings caused Pasuwa to change his team regularly in the last games of this season’s campaign.
It seems the executive wanted him to fail to win the championship and use that as an excuse to either fire him or demote him.
Fortunately, it didn’t work and they have been left shamefully exposed.
Can you imagine that the players are still owed winning bonuses from, at least, three of their last games?
So much for motivation for a team that was fighting for the championship.
Why would they have gone on to engage Kelvin Kaindu and Ian Gorowa if they wanted Pasuwa to continue?
Understandably, this is not the first time he has had such treatment from the club.
It happened again when he was a player in 2002 when he was part of those who were shipped out, en-masse, because the then coach felt they no longer had anything to offer because of their age.
The good thing is that the move launched his coaching career and as a true DeMbare son, he ended up back at his roots, giving his fans joy.
The only sensible and respectable thing that the executive team should do is to resign en-masse.
Besides frustrating the coach and players, they haven’t done anything to warrant their continued stay.
It’s unfortunate that the board of directors is too blind to see, and too ignorant to evaluate, the work and progress, or rather lack of it, of Mubaiwa and his team.
The team is on a downward trend, financially, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist that new brains are needed to rescue the biggest team in the country.
The current crop is devoid of ideas and should go.
Failing to get the team to play in the Champions League next year was failure, on the part of the executive, which should be punishable by dissolution of this executive.
Bothwell Mahlengwe is a banker and former Premiership footballer and can be contacted, for feedback, on e-mail: [email protected]
Robson Sharuko is away and could not provide his usual column, Sharuko on Saturday, this weekend.
Online Reporter