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THIS is a very special year in Zimbabwe football — it’s the 40th anniversary of the Dynamos Immortals’ remarkable success story, the year CAPS United’s won their ticket into the Premiership, to give birth to the Harare Derby, the 20th anniversary of the year the Green Machine came of age and, boy oh boy, Highlanders are 90 years old, just 10 short of a century.

Ndumiso Gumede is also 70 this year.

And the charismatic Bosso chief executive, who seemingly never ages nor fades away from the corridors of power in domestic football, whose entire life has been connected with this iconic club founded 20 years before he was born, has watched — from a front row seat — as Highlanders evolved into this giant.

A massive institution that is more than just a football club which has become an integral part of the lives of millions of Zimbabweans.

For their biggest rivals, Dynamos, the common denominator in the ring of enemies among the country’s Big Three football clubs, an exclusive group whose membership also features CAPS United, this year marks the 40th anniversary of that spectacular season when the Glamour Boys Immortals touched the heavens with a show that sent a benchmark for success stories on the domestic football front.

That vintage class of Glamour Boys gave a new meaning to dominance on the domestic front as they won five of the six trophies on offer, including the league championship.

Playing attacking football that was some light years ahead of their time, those Glamour Boys scored 67 goals in knockout tournaments, to add to the 50 they scored in the 10-team league, for an incredible haul of 117 goals in just one year, as they won the league title, Castle Cup, Nyore Nyore Shield and the Southern African Club Championship.

More than their remarkable trophy haul, what stood out was the manner in which they marched to success — thrashing Chibuku 8-0 in the Nyore Nyore Shield final, with the late Daniel “Dhidhidhi” Ncube scoring five goals in that match, handing Zimbabwe Saints an 8-1 hammering in the Castle Cup final and overturning a 3-5 first leg deficit to thrash Orlando Pirates 4-1 on an unforgettable rain-drenched afternoon at Rufaro to become champions of Southern Africa.

In a normal football environment, the 40th anniversary of the grand achievements of those Glamour Boys’ Immortals, the men who set the benchmark of excellence for this massive club, would have been celebrated all season with sights and sound of their achievements being captured on special DVDs, magazines, the jerseys that those men used to wear, all being sold for the benefit of this club.

But, then, this is a club that forgot to remember the 10th anniversary of the year a group of Glamour Boys came within 90 minutes of being crowned champions of Africa in 1998, before their dream was cruelly extinguished, in diabolical fashion, in that match-made-in-hell in Abidjan when the entire African football machinery was set against them.

It’s a club that promised us they will celebrate their Golden Jubilee, the 50th anniversary of the year their founding fathers met and created a team that would evolve into far much more than just a football side, for millions of Zimbabweans, but certainly an integral part of their lives, a part of their DNA, a gift from the Lord that has made their life a beautiful journey.

But, as we all know, those grand celebrations — meant for three years ago — never materialised leaving those founding fathers, who have died along the way, turning in their graves over the lack of respect for a project they created which, with the passage of time, changed the face of Zimbabwe football.

Since that year, in 1976, when Shepherd Murape and his men virtually swept everything on offer, Dynamos have won 18 league titles, more than twice what Highlanders have won in total and more than four times what CAPS United have won in total, and — on the 40th anniversary of the year those supermen set a benchmark for success — the Class of 2016 can, at least, start the ball rolling in paying tribute to those Glamour Boys Immortals by winning the Harare Derby at Rufaro tomorrow.

While the current generation of players might never scale the heights of those Immortals, while they don’t have someone as good as George Shaya in their ranks, while the majority — if not all of them — would have struggled to make the reserve side of that great team, while question marks remain about the pedigree of their coach who continues to see shadows everywhere he goes, injecting a degree of toxicity at the club amid claims of sabotage, Silva and his men can still pay tribute to those supermen by winning the Derby tomorrow.

That’s the least those ’76 supermen could ask for from those who now wear the blue-and-white strip, those who today carry the torch with the responsibility to write the kind of success stories those fellows wrote some 40 years ago and, given the way CAPS United emerged, a year after that landmark triumph four decades ago, to provide the ultimate challenge for Dynamos’ dominance on the domestic football front, any victory over the Green Machine — and especially in such a special year — could carry its weight in gold.

The current crop of Glamour Boys owe it to those supermen, even if they might not play the kind of bewitching football that those Immortals displayed, to defend the good name of this proud institution — especially in the year when the club is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the achievements of those supermen.

And, while so far, the performances that we have seen from Silva’s men have been an insult to that legacy, a victory over CAPS United and all the feel-good factor that it carries, especially in a game where, for a change, the Glamour Boys are coming in as the underdogs, will make up for all that wave of mediocrity we have seen from Dynamos since the season started.

THE GREEN MACHINE SHOULD ALSO PAY TRIBUTE TO THE CLASS OF ‘96

For everything that Steve Kwashi and his men achieved in 1996 — winning the league championship for CAPS United for the first time in the post-Independence era, something that a number of great Makepekepe teams, including the ones under the leadership of the late Joel “Jubilee” Shambo, had failed to do throughout the ‘80s — it’s interesting to note that, whenever you speak to those heroes of ’96, the games that stand out for them are the ones against Dynamos.

Talk to Silver Chigwenje, the captain of that side, and he will tell you that the game that stands out for him was that 1-1 draw against the old enemy at Rufaro when, with CAPS United drifting towards a defeat that had the potential of destroying their season and championship challenge, up stepped Mphumelelo Dzowa to unleash a thunderbolt, from a dead ball, that gave them a point that was as good as all three.

This week Chigwenje talked to our Senior Reporter Grace Chingoma and, as he has so often repeated in his interviews, it’s that game against the Glamour Boys that still stands out for him and, 20 years down the line, the entire spectrum of emotions that they went through that afternoon, have not faded from their souls as they battled the tide of history — the team that would never win the league championship since Rhodesia became our proud Zimbabwe — and every passing second, passing minute, appearing to suggest that those who claimed they were cursed were right after all.

A Dynamos that had perfected the art of winning the league championship had just knocked on their door, to try and grab the one piece of silverware that CAPS United had so much desired, and after Kaitano Tembo had fired the Glamour Boys into the lead, and time appeared to connive against the Green Machine, promoting the interests of their eternal rivals in this massive game, hope began to evaporate from the green hearts.

No one remembers who comes second, Chigwenje and his men knew that, and if they blew it all – a season’s work being destroyed in this one big game – they would not be remembered as the legends that their spirited efforts probably deserved but just as another group of CAPS United players who collapsed, when it mattered most, in the league championship race while to their eternal rivals, who now sensed victory, all the spoils would go.

This was a very strong Dynamos team, one of the finest ever assembled by the Glamour Boys, the DeMbare of Memory Mucherahowa, Tauya Murewa, Vitalis Takawira, you name them, uncompromising at the back, efficient in midfield and deadly upfront, and I have always maintained that, for a questionable coaching decision to put Moses Chunga on the bench in the second leg of their Champions League quarter-final tie against Express of Uganda at the National Sports Stadium the previous year, this side would have become African champions in 1995.

Chunga might have been in the twilight of his career but his magical touch remained intact and, after he had scored the solitary goal that gave DeMbare the 1-0 victory in Kampala in the first leg, he was somehow withdrawn to the bench in the second leg and by the time he was introduced in the second half, the Ugandans had wiped out that deficit but his first touch showed what those Glamour Boys had missed in the first 45 minutes with Bambo taking the ball on his chest and then volleying it home for the equaliser.

Even though his vision created a number of chances for Takawira and his crew upfront, which were blown away as pressure began to build, the Ugandans scored again and a 2-1 win meant they won that quarter-final game on goal difference and poor Dynamos were left to wonder what might have been had Chunga played the entire 90 minutes, a Champions League dream destroyed by a massive coaching blunder.

So, for Chigwenje and his men to be able to beat them, in the championship race that followed in ’96, was very special and talk to Alois Bunjira and he will tell you that the enduring memories from that season where those battles against DeMbare, the crunching foul from Tembo that kept him on the sidelines for a long time even though he still scored 23 goals that season, more than anyone else, and lost the battle for the Soccer Star of the Year to Stewart Murisa by just a single vote.

Talk to Shutto and he will tell you that the enduring memories from that season were the duels against the old enemy, his remarkable left-footed powerful shot from distance which powered its way home in that BP League Cup showdown, triggering pandemonium as the game was called off prematurely in the mayhem that followed with a number of ZUPCO buses being torched.

In the season that marks the 20th anniversary of the year that CAPS United roared and escaped from the fields of virginity, where those who had not yet won the league championship in post-Independence Zimbabwe were confined, the Class of 2016 have a moral obligation to pay tribute to those heroes by beating the ultimate enemy tomorrow and ending seven years of pain for the Green Machine who have found the task of winning a league game against their biggest rivals Mission Impossible since April 2009.

Lloyd Chitembwe knows what it means to celebrate a success story, while there are tears at the Glamour Boys, it’s something he did in 1996, 2004 and 2005 and, now as coach, he knows that — everything that his men have done very well to date in winning two and drawing one of their first three league games — will count for nothing should they lose to the one team their fans hate losing to.

He might not have someone as good as Bunjira or Murisa, in his strikeforce, or someone as influential as Joe Mugabe or Farai Mbidzo in his midfield or someone with the leadership qualities of Chigwenje in his defensive wall, but Chitembwe knows that duty calls tomorrow and, irrespective of his men’s limitations, they have an obligation — at least to pay tribute to the Class of ’96 in this special year — by beating the eternal enemy.

By using this special year, which provides a reminder of a time when CAPS United were great, to end the suffering inflicted in more than half-a-dozen years by this team that represents the ultimate rival, whose pain is greater than that inflicted by a combination of all the other clubs put together, to end the pounding they have suffered at the hands of those men from the Blue Army, and the taunting from their fans, Chitembwe and his men would have, at least, paid a tribute to the legacy of those supermen from ’96.

There is a reason why Nyasha Mushekwi has a special place in the hearts of the CAPS United fans because, on an unforgettable afternoon at Rufaro in 2009, he was there for them, his devastation in front of goal powering them to a victory that has found itself into the archives and someone in this Green Machine line-up should accept that challenge and if he can score twice in a victory tomorrow, to end all that misery, he would have done his part in celebrating the efforts of the Class of ’96 in this very special year.

AN ENDURING RIVALRY THAT HAS STOOD THE TEST OF TIME

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the year that CAPS United won their ticket into the Premiership when, at the end of 1976, the team then known as CAPS Rovers finally qualified for a dance with the heavyweights of domestic football, just three years after the club’s formation. Before their entrance into the Premiership, the Harare Derby was a battle between Dynamos and Black Aces and other teams in the capital but, by the time CAPS Rovers came onto the stage, Aces were beginning to fade — as a force — leaving most of their fans, sworn enemies of the Glamour Boys, without a club to back in its challenge of DeMbare.

And, then, CAPS Rovers came along.

Their first duel against Dynamos, in 1977, was played before a capacity crowd which, included a young Charles Mabika, the boy from Mbare who would rise, in the subsequent years, to become the country’s premier football commentator and a moveable library of the domestic game that is as good as it gets.

DeMbare won that game 3-1 but such was the way CAPS gallantly fought in a losing cause, against a team that had destroyed everything in its path the previous season and conquered Southern Africa, they made a big impression on a number of neutrals — and a considerable number of deserting Aces fans — and, just like that, the Harare Derby was born.

Shacky Tauro featured in that match, in a striking partnership with Peter Agostinho, and in the subsequent years the man commentator Choga Tichatoonga Gavhure called “Bere, Mr Goals, Chinyaride, mazita kuita kupfekerana”, back in the days when football commentary on radio was such an art to admire, more substance than noise, more quality than quantity, when people even carried radios to the stadium to listen to a game they were watching, would make a lasting impression on the Harare Derby.

And, as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of that year when the Dynamos Immortals crushed everything in their path and CAPS United grabbed their ticket to play in the Premiership, giving birth to the Harare Derby whose latest edition explodes into life tomorrow, let’s spare a thought — in the week that rhumba giant Papa Wemba died, Prince was cremated and justice was finally delivered to those Liverpool fans who perished at Hillsborough —to remember those we lost, along the way, through the power of music.

In May 1997, American rapper Puff Daddy and singer Faith Evans, with the help of the group 112, released the super song, “I’ll Be Missing You”, which topped many charts across the world and spent a record-breaking 11 weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, winning a Grammy award for Best Rap Performance by a duo or group and selling more than eight million copies.

It is rated as the 99th best song of all-time and, as we remember those who made this Derby what it is but, sadly are not here with us today having passed on, its lyrics will provide a fitting closing soundtrack to all this.

“Seems like yesterday when we used to rock the show

I lace the track you lock the flow

So far from hanging on the block of dough

Notorious they got to know that

Life ain’t always what it seems to be

Words can’t express what you mean to me

And though you’re gone, we still a TEAM

Through your family I’ll fulfill your dreams

In the future can’t wait to see

If you’ll open up the gates for me

Reminisce sometime

The night they took my friend

Try to black it out but it plays again

When it’s weird feeling it’s really hard to conceal

Can’t imagine all the pain I feel

Give everything to hear half your breath

I know you still living your life after death

Every step I take, every move I make

Every single day, every time I pray

I’ll be missing you

Thinking of the day, when you went away

What a life to take, what a bond to break

I’ll be missing you

It’s kind of hard with you not around

Know you in heaven smiling down

Watching us while we pray for you

Every day we pray for you

Till the day we meet again

In my heart is where I’ll keep you friend

Memories give me the strength I need to proceed

Strength I need to believe

My thoughts big I just can’t define

Wish I could turn back the hands of time

Bust in the 6

Shop for new clothes and kicks

You and me taking flicks

Making hits stages they receive you on

Still can’t believe you’re gone

Give anything to hear half your breath

I know you still living your life after death.”

Come on Warriors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Khamaldinhoooooooooooooooooo!

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