What Chicken Inn heroes? We lost!

FOR the life in me I don’t quite get why Chicken Inn are being treated like heroes when they are a team that bowed out of a competition in the preliminary round.
Hold your fire.
Yours truly appreciates that the Gamecocks were defending the national flag but come on fellow Zimbabweans, the way we are showering them with praise is really worrying.
Are we really desperate for success that we now celebrate defeat like this?
A visitor to this beautiful land would think that Chicken Inn did something out of this world when they went to Pretoria last weekend to handle some unfinished Caf Champions League business with Mamelodi Sundowns.
The headlines and the hectares of media space Joey “Mafero” Antipas and his men have been getting can easily fool the uninitiated into believing that the Zimbabwean champions did a number on Amasandawana yet they lost 0-2 to bow out of premier’s club competition 1-2 on aggregate.
Maybe VaShagare is vakatsika (stuck) like someone who has just abused cough mixture but there is something wrong with celebrating failure, no matter the circumstances.
Maybe we have finally accepted our fate as a football loving nation that always fails to make it on the grand stage hence we don’t find it unusual to treat losers as winners.
Yes Chicken Inn gave a good account of themselves, punched way above their weight, but the fact still remains that the Zimbabwean champions lost to Mzansi’s champions in waiting.
As our journalists try to put make-up on the ugly frog that is defeat, bombarding us with feel-good stories, no one has dared to mention that the goals conceded by the Gamecocks ought to have been avoided.
It’s all about “they played well, they didn’t embarrass us”.
No guys, failure is failure and football remembers winners not also rans, please show me the reigning playing well champions and I will show you a non-obese Wicknel Chivayo!
Sundowns capitalised on elementary mistakes by our team, it must be noted.
On 34 minutes Passmore Bernard needlessly bundled his man over to give Khama Billiat a chance to whip in a cross.
And when it came to defending that set piece the Chicken Inn defenders failed to maintain their line on the 6 yard box, eliminating the chance of Sundowns players straying into offside positions.
They paid dearly as Wayne Arendse headed home. On the second goal it was a case of a defender failing to think when tired.
Again there was no need for Bernard to plunge into Billiat, absolutely none.
Maybe contact was made outside the box but the referee was not wearing a microscope, he saw contact and pointed to the spot.
What Katlego Mashego did with the resultant penalty is a matter of public, painful record.
Antipas insists it was a dodgy decision but deep down in his heart Mafero must know that if it had happened at the other end he would have been the first to appeal for it and our media would have been screaming “we was robbed” if it hadn’t been given.
Now if a team makes such elementary mistakes, at such a grand stage, they will get punished and we thank our ancestors that Chicken Inn were not taken to the cleaners at the Lucas Moripe Stadium last Saturday.
Until we stop being pussy footed we will continue to come short on the grand stage.
The margins, as our beloved champions Chicken Inn found out, are so small in these big games.
VaShagare exits the scene!