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Sharuko On Saturday
ON May 20, last year, Khama Billiat played his last match in South Africa.
It was his first game in five months and, in keeping with his final nightmarish season in Mzansi, his team lost that game at home.
By then, it was very clear his flirtation with Kaizer Chiefs, which had started as a dream romantic story, was coming to a painful end and a nasty divorce was looming.
Billiat looked like an imitation of himself, a latter day Samson without his hair, a new millennium Tauya Murewa without his cheeky body swerve.
A prized fighter who had lost his way and, paralysed by a cruel combination of injuries, he appeared a stranger on the very theatre he had used to announce his arrival and express his genius.
For those of us who love him, it was difficult to watch him go through all that pain – the brain mind telling him he could do it and the broken body rejecting signals to produce the magic which, in the past, used to come naturally.
And, those South Africans, who were looking for someone “foreigner” to blame for the sins of their royal football family, which had turned Kaizer Chiefs into this ordinary club, found an easy target in Billiat,
After all, they said, he was earning too much money, he wasn’t scoring the goals he used to score at Mamelodi Sundowns, he wasn’t producing the same magic and he spent a long time on the sidelines.
It was as if once Billiat was pushed out, the glory would return to Chiefs, the goals would flow again, they were going to win trophies and everyone connected to the Amakhosi was going to live happily ever after.
Well, football isn’t a reality show like Big Brother Mzansi and in the first season after their divorce with Billiat was sealed, Chiefs finished in 10th place – 37 points behind champions Sundowns.
This means Sundowns would even have afforded not to fulfil 12 of the games they won, and lose them by walkover, but the Brazilians would still have finished ahead of Chiefs by a point.
Chiefs finished 10th and won only nine games all season, the worst record among the teams which finished in the top 10, and that was only one win better than Richards Bay, which finished second from the bottom of the table.
It became very clear, even to those blinkered fans who had been conditioned to think Billiat was the sum of all their problems, to start seeing that they had been sold a dummy.
For Billiat, the Mzanzi adventure was over and, unwanted by a country which had become his adopted home, it was time to go back to the green grass of home and try to find both love and comfort.
THEY NOW KNOW HE ISN’T FINISHED
This week, 16 months after he left Mzansi to return home in search of love, Billiat returned to South Africa for an examination at a stadium Orlando Pirates call home.
The boy they said was crippled to such an extent he would never play football, at a very high level again, returned in the colours of his country for an AFCON qualifier.
Fate, somehow, ensured that his return battle would pit him against Peter Shalulile, the Sundowns forward who replaced him as the poster boy of Supa Diski.
Peter, the King of Gauteng, the boy from Katutura who scooped both the South African Footballer of the Year and Players Player of the Year awards two years ago.
The man who has scored 51 league goals in the past three seasons and, in the previous Champions League, won the Golden Boot, tied on six goals with Al Ahly’s Mahmoud Kahraba.
Billiat did not produce the standout individual performance which he turned on in his last game for his country, against the Indomitable Lions, in which he cast a spell on the Cameroon defenders.
He has never been the kind of player who can produce fireworks without a crowd to provide the motion picture soundtrack to what would be happening on the pitch.
He isn’t the kind of footballer who can excel without the sights and sounds, which come from the stands, which have followed and inspired him throughout his career.
This was a tough return to Mzansi for Billiat but that he scored the only goal of the match showed once again that, despite everything which happened in the final year of his stay in South Africa, he remains the man with the X-Factor.
Don’t be fooled that it was a penalty.
This wasn’t a routine penalty kick.
This was a pressure-cooker penalty and that he accepted the responsibility to take it is a credit to the strength of his character, especially given the weight he was carrying.
Other players, in his shoes, would have passed the torch.
They would have battled with their conscience, wondering and fearing what would happen, in the event that they missed – the South African media ready to savage them.
The television pundits would have gone on and on about why Chiefs were right to let him go, all in the name of massaging Bobby’s ego, and social media would have devoured him.
He would have been bashed for putting himself ahead of the team’s interests by taking the penalty, to try and smuggle himself into the headlines, even when he knew that he was finished as a footballer.
We would have been told, again and again, that his last league goal in Mzansi came on 27 April, 2022, in that 1-2 loss to Golden Arrows and this wasn’t the kind of man who should be trusted to take such a key spot kick.
That Billiat chose to take the penalty, at Orlando Stadium of all places, in Johannesburg, of all cities, and in South Africa, of all countries, is testament to the strength of his steely character.
He wasn’t proving anything to anyone but he was just doing his job – for his country, for his teammates, for his fans and for his coach, in that order.
It wasn’t the best of his penalty kicks, which reminds us of the demons he was battling against, but the bottom line is that he scored and that is what matters.
And, that it was the only goal of the match, made the conversion even more special.
YES, MICHAEL, IT’S NOT A BEAUTY CONTEST
We need to put all this into context to fully appreciate the significance of that moment from just two yards.
It’s from these 12 yards that Roberto Baggio will forever be remembered in this game, his spot kick flying into the American skyline, in the World Cup final, a reminder that there is no guarantee a penalty will be scored.
It’s from these 12 yards that Lionel Messi finally sealed his immortality in football, by winning the World Cup, after a penalty shootout in Qatar.
Billiat had last scored a goal for his country five years ago when he scored twice in a 2-1 win over Zambia in an AFCON qualifier in Lusaka on November 19, 2019.
Of course, the period between then and now also includes the time when Billiat had decided to retire from international football before he changed his mind.
But, without him, we had won just two games – the AFCON qualifier against Botswana (1-0) and the AFCON finals match against Guinea (2-1).
This was our first win in 10 matches, spread over two years and eight months, and records will show that Washington Arubi had a fine show and Billiat scored the solitary goal.
We also have to give credit to the coach, Michael Nees.
He made history on Thursday when he became the first Warriors coach to ensure his team kept a clean sheet in his first three AFCON qualifiers.
The German coach appears to be warming up well to his job and I like the fact that he is not afraid to ring the changes when he detects that some of our players are not firing as expected.
I get an impression that he is still trying to find his best combinations upfront which, right now, appears to be our Achilles Heel, especially because we don’t seem to have a natural gunslinger.
But, any coach who builds a strong defence always has a chance because a team, which does not concede, doesn’t lose a match.
That has always been the Mhofu template – let’s sort our defence guys and the rest can take care of itself.
That was also the Reinhard Fabisch template with his Dream Team – the defence was rock solid and, usually, like George Graham’s Arsenal, if we scored one goal, it was enough.
Of course, both Fabisch and Mhofu had Peter Ndlovu who, with just one mazy run into the heart of the opposition, would find the magic to create the defining moment.
Michael Nees does not have a Peter Ndlovu.
But, at least, he has Khama Billiat and while this boy might not be at the level of King Peter, he has his own bag of magic.
With him in the team, we always have a chance and I have always wondered what Brito would have achieved if, like Nees, he had the opportunity to have Billiat in his squad. But, that is the past.
What matters is the future and Nees’ probation is going on well – nothing spectacular but, like all German coaches, it’s about efficiency.
He said football was not a beauty contest, when he was told that his team didn’t play as well as their fans would have loved.
I agree with him, as a long suffering Manchester United fan, that what matters in this game is winning.
It’s better to have an ugly win than a beautiful loss.
That’s what we got on Thursday, thanks of course to a goal scored by the King of Jo’burg on his return to the City of Gold.
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Khamaldhinoooooooooooooooooo! Text Feedback: 0772545199, WhatsApp: 0772545199, Email: [email protected]
You can also interact with me on the ZTV football programme, Game Plan, where I join the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika on Wednesdays
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