adminAFTER the emotional tsunami triggered by Masimba Mambare’s move from Highlanders to Dynamos, it’s refreshing that a major Warriors assignment tomorrow will bring a sense of unity across our deeply divided football family.Our colleagues at the Chronicle dubbed Mambare a Judas Iscariot, in a front-page lead story that had a headline that screamed “TRAITOR”, and whether that is what stoked the fires that raged this week, reaching a crescendo on social media, is something that can be debated.
My good friend, Nodumo Nyathi, is a Highlanders fan, as passionate and loyal as they will ever come, and feels the Chronicle’s dubbing of Mambare as a “TRAITOR”, is a fitting description of a footballer who gave them a false sense of security, just two months ago, that he was staying and, when he decided to go against his word, chose to move to the team that represents the ultimate enemy.
In the mist of the pain inflicted by people we consider to be our heroes, when the bond that united them and us is suddenly snapped by events that send our emotions exploding all over the soul, it’s easy to be dazed to such an extent that reasoning becomes a very rare commodity.
Fourteen years ago, Barcelona fans were dazzled by that mist of the pain inflicted by their ultimate hero, Luis Figo, choosing Real Madrid, of all teams, as his next employers in the same year he received recognition as the best footballer in the world.
Richard Fitzpatrick , a freelance journalist who has written a book on the El Clasisco — Barcelona v Real Madrid, Football’s Greatest Rivalry, recalls that when Figo returned to the Nou Camp to play against Barcelona, for the first time in Real Madrid colours, armed police surrounded the team’s bus for protection.
But that wall of security didn’t stop the raging Barcelona fans, yelling “Death to Figo,” from ambushing the bus, five windows were smashed and the Real Madrid players ended up seeking refugee on the floor as missiles flew past.
“He was, in Barca eyes, the worst kind of traitor — a pesetero, a money-grabber, as he took to the pitch, noise levels (virtually all of it offensive), according to the sound metre that Canal Plus television had installed for the match, were higher than at any nightclub in town,” Goal, the respected football website, reported on Figo’s 40th birthday.
“Anytime he ventured near one of the corners of the pitch objects, including coins, mobile phones, half-bricks, and a bicycle chain, rained down on top of him. When he played in the same fixture two years later, someone threw the head of a suckling pig at him while he prepared to take a corner.
“Whenever Figo returned to the Camp Nou, bodyguards were detailed to safeguard him.”
Interestingly, in Fitzpatrick’s best-selling book, Figo says he understands where the Barcelona fans’ animosity towards him came from.
If you are one of those who might have found faults in the way the Chronicle dubbed Mambare a ‘TRAITOR’ this week, then you have a good pal in Figo who blames the media for the hurricane of anger that kept greeting his every visit to the Camp Nou.
“Fans are people who don’t have their own opinions,” Figo says in Fitzpatrick’s book. “Many times, masses are moved by the opinion of others, IN THIS CASE THE MEDIA. It’s all about business. In the end, everything was generated by the Press.
“I see it that way because the media always wants to take advantage of a situation.”
We have our vast army of critics, who have perfected the art of accusing us of being pro-Dynamos to such an extent that we have become a very powerful arm of the Glamour Boys’ ruthless domination of the domestic football scene, and because of that, I feel we are not qualified to judge whether our colleagues at the Chronicle crossed the line with their Mambare headline.
What can’t be ignored is that the Chronicle captured the mood of a city, where the majority of their newspapers are sold, and a football club that means so much to the majority of their readership than all the other football clubs put together and whose success has a feel-good factor in boosting their sales.
“It’s all about business,” that’s what Figo told Fitzpatrick, and sport sells newspapers, and for all the professionalism that we cry out for in this country, the biggest selling daily newspaper in Spain, Marca, is a sports newspaper that doesn’t hide the fact that it supports Real Madrid.
Football is an emotional game and until last week Robert Lewandowski was one of the biggest idols of the Borussia Dortmund fans, more than 80 000 of them fill German football’s biggest ground, the Westfalenstadion, every time the team plays at home, with their imposing Yellow Wall creating the game’s most iconic spectacle in world football today.
But when it was announced that Lewandowski would be leaving Dortmund, at the end of the season, to join bitter rivals Bayern Munich in a five-year deal, that special bond was broken, the Pole turned from idol to Judas and has now been forced to hire personal security for protection, against the very people who virtually worshipped him yesterday, in the last few months of his Dortmund career.
I think the word ‘verratter’, which is German for traitor, has been frequently used in the Dortmund pubs in recent days whenever the subject of a certain Pole, who in the penultimate season of his time in the Polish top-flight league, Ekstraklasa, before his move to Dortmund, finished five goals adrift of our own Takesure Chinyama, who won the Golden Boot, with 19 goals.
His name is Robert Lewandowski.
The Other Side Of The Story
There are some, though, like my workmate Lloyd Gumbo, a news reporter on this newspaper who is also a passionate fan of Highlanders, who feel that lampooning Mambare as a traitor was way, way, offside.
In a poisonous environment, where the friction between Dynamos and Highlanders fans has often resulted in violence at Barbourfields of late, there are some who feel that such a graphic description of an athlete who has exercised his right to move to an employer of his choice, has the potential of worsening the divisions.
Others feel the media, because of its massive influence, should play a leading role in cooling the temperatures and, unfortunately, that certainly won’t be helped when words like traitor are used in an environment that is already explosive.
In the feedback generated by that headline, there were suggestions by others that this bordered on hate speech, and rather than healing the wounds inflicted by years of a fierce rivalry between DeMbare and Bosso, it will not only reopen some wounds but inflict some fresh ones, likely to be cancerous.
Their argument was that football was just but a game and, beyond the battles that happen on the pitch and, at times in the stands, was our identity as Zimbabweans, which was what unites us as a people and was more important than the combination of all the things that occasionally divide us, football and politics included.
It isn’t hard to be charmed by their argument because, when you look at our beautiful country and all the challenges that it faces right now, you realise that we are better off walking as a united nation, reaching out to each other, and telling each other every time, like what they always do at Liverpool, that you will never walk alone.
That’s precisely what my colleague, Lloyd Gumbo was arguing this week, in a surprisingly sober analysis for one who concedes that Mambare’s defection was a very bitter pill to swallow, that his move was nowhere close to treacherous.
Mambare wasn’t groomed by Bosso, the way Peter Ndlovu grew up in the ranks of the iconic Bulawayo club, he arrived there two years ago as a league championship winner with Motor Action, a seasoned footballer who had already made his mark in the game.
No one questioned his decision to resist the courtship of a number of clubs from Harare, which guaranteed him the comforts of staying in the city that is his hometown, because there was mutual respect that, as a professional footballer and adult, his freedom of choice to choose Bosso as his next employers should be respected.
The fact that he flourished at Highlanders, in his first season, and would have been full value for the Soccer Star of the Year crown if he had won the award which went to Denver Mukamba, buttressed the wisdom of his decision to move to a club of his choice where he was confident his game would grow.
The fact that his excellent performance that season was a key component in helping Highlanders stage their best championship challenge, since the year they won the league title in 2006, is something that people like Lloyd Gumbo attach a lot of value to and, even in the mist of the pain inflicted by his decision to leave, they have found a way not to ignore what he did to their club.
He was already 25 when he arrived at Bosso and, given that he will be 30 in just two years time, he knows that his career has entered into that phase where it’s now in a race against time and, if he can’t make the most of the few years left for him to play at the peak of his powers, then that’s it for him.
It’s easy to blame him as a mercenary but, against a background where true Bosso sons, like Zeph and Josta have jumped the train before in search of greener pastures elsewhere, Rahman Kutsanzira comes to Harare in the prime of his athletic powers to join CAPS United and Makwinji Soma-Phiri, Lovemore “Magents” Ncube and Lenny Gwata have blazed the trail before, to join Dynamos, the prosecution case against Mambare loses its strength.
What emerges is a picture of a journeyman professional footballer whose instincts are not guided by loyalty to any brand or team but to a club that provides him with the best possible conditions for him to work and, in the process, try and become the best player on the domestic Premiership and also win trophies, including the league championship.
His attachment with his employer doesn’t go beyond the contractual obligations that bind them and while, now and again, he can show emotion to project an image that he is together with the club’s family in pursuit of their targets, that shouldn’t be misconstrued to suggest that it’s a demonstration of eternal loyalty to the club.
All that he is doing, simply, is his job, in as honest a manner as can be possible, and when he felt that his time at Motor Action had run its course, in the year that the Mighty Bulls were champions, he simply packed his bags and went to Bosso and, when he also felt that his time at Highlanders had run its course, he moved elsewhere.
Questions, inevitably, will be asked as to why he was giving the Bosso family that public assurance, only two months ago, that he was with them for the long run, as speculation heightened that he was set to leave and his relationship with Soweto crumbled, worsened, of course, by his poor form, if he knew that he would be gone by the end of December?
And, crucially, he didn’t only leave but went to join the ultimate enemy. But, against a background where there are outstanding issues, including reports that Bosso were struggling to honour their obligations to him, including paying off his signing-on fee two years after he arrived at the club, it’s unfair to expect only Mambare to play the role of the good party that keeps its word when his employers are failing to do the same.
And, as we have seen this week, Njabulo Ncube, whose bond with Bosso is even stronger than Mambare, left the club because Highlanders couldn’t provide the financial guarantees that he needed to take care of his family and sort out his personal issues.
Of course, JB’s move hasn’t triggered a tsunami, but that’s understandable because joining FC Platinum can, at least, be tolerated and isn’t something like joining Dynamos but what is important here is that the same underlying causes, which pushed Mambare to move elsewhere to serve his family, are the same that have forced Njabulo to do the same.
What true Highlanders fans should be asking themselves is how is it possible that a team like Dynamos, a poor community club just like their own which heavily relies on the financial bailout of the same sponsor, BancABC, who also help keep the Bosso wheels moving, finds itself in a position to offer Mambare what their team can’t?
Probably, when they find the answers to this question, then they can begin to see that rather than Mambare being the villain, who should be lampooned by such graphic terms like traitor, it is their club’s leadership that should be questioned and, if that is done, they could be the ones that are found wanting.
Just As Well The Warriors Will Unite Us
Against the depressing background of the deep divisions that emerged this week in our game, the hate language that poisoned the social media sites, it’s refreshing that tomorrow the Warriors will unite us, as one football family, when they begin their campaign at the CHAN finals in Cape Town.
Mambare is part of that team which some fans, coaches and pundits believe has the capacity to do better than the other crew of Warriors that went to the inaugural edition of the 2009 CHAN finals in Cote d’Ivoire and the 2011 CHAN finals in Sudan.
Sunday Chidzambwa and his men didn’t win a game in Cote d’Ivoire but neither did they lose a game, in a tough group that produced the two finalists — Ghana and the DRC — and Gilbert Banda knows that he came within just a connection, in the final minute in the drawn match against Libya, to score and take them into the semi-finals.
Back then, only eight teams took part in the CHAN finals. Ian Gorowa hasn’t lost a match since taking over as Warriors coach but there is no doubt that his good record will be severely tested at this CHAN finals and the opening match tomorrow, against a Morocco side set to unleash eight Raja Casablanca players who did well to lose just 0-2 in the Fifa Club World Cup against mighty Bayern Munich, will set the tempo.
The good thing about CHAN, which has now been given official Fifa accreditation with its games being given “A” status, is that it features the players that we spend all season watching at our local stadiums, those heroes who are closer to home, the boys from the neighbourhood we see every day in the townships, the men who drive the machines of the local teams that we love.
They are part of us, when the economy sneezes as is the case now, they also catch the cold just like us, when the rains don’t come as expected, they join us all in prayer for the Lord to have Mercy on us, when the retailers swindle us by hiking the price of school uniforms, as the case now, they feel it hit their pockets just like all of us.
And we mourn together on the occasions when our cars plunge into the craters created by those potholes of the Harare and Bulawayo streets.
Just like us, they also receive those texts from Econet saying you have received free 5MB, valid for seven days, on their mobile phones and we both feel the pain when, after checking the data bundles balance, a report pops up to tell us that we have 0.0000MB, and we wonder what the hell is going on here.
They are our boys and, since we started sending teams to the CHAN finals, they are the group that had the best preparations and all that is left now is for them to try and deliver for a nation that is fully behind them.
I don’t agree with those who are suddenly saying that this team is primed to win this CHAN tournament, it’s good to be ambitious and optimistic, but it’s important to be realistic, too, and given that we failed to qualify beyond the group stages, our immediate target should be qualifying from our group, which will in itself be a success, and everything else will be a bonus.
To God Be The Glory!
Come on Warriors !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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