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PURE UNDILUTED PLATINUM . . . FC Platinum players Gift Mbweti (right), Wallace Magalane (second from right) and Hillary Bakacheza (left) celebrate with an unnamed fan after their team clinched the 2017 Castle Lager Premiership soccer title by beating Chapungu United 2-0 at Ascot on Saturday

Robson Sharuko Senior Sports Editor
FOR some, it’s an amazing triumph that was written in the stars — one of the best football teams from outside the country’s two biggest cities finally ending more than half-a-century of waiting by being crowned champions of domestic football.

Denied the same silverware in heartbreaking fashion, when a spectacular smash-and-pocket mission by Dynamos succeeded at Mandava six years ago, FC Platinum finally walked on the podium of champions on Saturday after beating Chapungu 2-0 at Ascot.

For others it was a deserved triumph for persistence and quality for a club that has always been part of the championship race, in the past half-a-dozen years, but never appeared to have the character to handle the pressure that came with making the final leap into champions.

For some this was a combination of a good coach and a well-run professional football club finally reaping the ultimate dividends for their massive investment into this game in which they have led the way in how a proper football club should be administered.

For others it’s something that was meant to be — after, all, they will say it was written in the stars.

Like Spencer Manguwa, the Harare Liverpool-supporting business executive, who refused to be blinded by his love for Dynamos eight weeks ago to come up with one of the finest pieces of analysis seen in the history of domestic football, by working up a formula which would eventually end in FC Platinum being crowned champions.

There were seven games to go when Manguwa, after a careful analysis of all the four contenders’ remaining matches, wrote a piece published in this newspaper in which he boldly claimed FC Platinum would be champions at the end of the campaign.

History was against him because no club from outside Harare and Bulawayo had ever been crowned champions of domestic football since independence in 1980 and, crucially, none had achieved such success since 1966.

But Manguwa, who studied mathematics at the National University of Science and Technology in Bulawayo before furthering his education at a number of other universities, was so driven by his conviction he decided to publish it.

Today, after the events of the past eight weeks, he stands tall and walking with a spring in his step after somehow predicting correctly that FC Platinum would be champions but also by exactly the number of points they got at the end of their campaign (72).

Incredibly, his formula also suggested Dynamos would come second in the title race, just two points behind the eventual champions.

It’s such ground-breaking material on which legends are made and in a country full of some fake and real prophets, Manguwa has been a refreshing addition to the real deal.

And, to our football writers, whose responsibility includes great analysis and predictions, it’s the kind of provocative and authoritative stuff that has been lacking in their materials.

“That’s what the people want to read and that is what you don’t usually get in our newspapers,” Adolphus Chinomwe noted.

“You can’t call it a wild guess because this is someone who took his time and ability to analyse and came up with a brilliant formula.”

But what did Manguwa really say in the first week of October?

Well, as we join the country in congratulating FC Platinum for making history, let’s revisit his piece back then.

“From my predictions, l think FC Platinum will finally make history this time around by winning this league championship race by two points with Dynamos finishing second, two points behind,” Manguwa wrote on October 5.

“I, somehow, correctly predicted in my analysis that the match between FC Platinum and the Green Machine (at Mandava) would end in a draw even though l wasn’t so sure it would be that dramatic with the (then champions) scoring a late equaliser.

“In my prediction l was also sure Dynamos would beat Harare City, which they did, l wasn’t so sure Highlanders, who have been struggling of late, would find the power to floor Chicken Inn in a 4-0 drubbing.

“I believe Dynamos will pick 14 points out of a possible 21 points in their last seven matches and they will end the season on 70 points.”

And, as if on cue, that is exactly what happened.

“Normally, this is enough to win a team the league championship but we should not forget that this is an expanded league where, instead of 16 teams, we now have 18 teams in the top-flight league,” Manguwa wrote.

“FC Platinum, in my analysis, will collect 19 out of the remaining 21 points and that will take their points tally to 72 and they will win the championship by two points.

“I believe the Zvishavane miners will beat Highlanders away (which they did), beat Shabanie at home (which they did), draw against Harare City away from home (which happened), beat ZPC Kariba at Mandava (which they did).

“I also believe they will beat Tsholotsho away from home (which they did), beat Ngezi Platinum at home (which they did) and also beat Chapungu away from home (which they did on Saturday) in their final match.

“The six wins and one draw should power FC Platinum to 72 points and, finally, in my humble analysis, they will be crowned champions.” Whichever way one looks at it, it can’t get better than this.

Maybe that’s what happens when, finally, a 51-year-old empire crumbles to the ground.