Can our Golden Generation take us to Gabon?

BACKPAGE 4 06 16Robson Sharuko Senior Sports Editor—
SURELY lightning can’t strike twice and the Curse of ’93 — when the Dream Team choked under the weight of a nation’s expectations at the National Sports Stadium — won’t return to haunt our Golden Generation in their make-or-break 2017 Nations Cup qualifier tomorrow. Not just after the week we have had, celebrating Khama Billiat’s coming of age, with his conquest of the South African Premiership being confirmed by a clean sweep at the Rainbow Nation’s end-of-season awards gala on Monday night.

Certainly not after our indomitable skipper, Willard Katsande, was honoured — in the past two weeks — as the 2015/2016 Footballer of the Season at Kaizer Chiefs, the only light that shone brightly in a wretched season for the Glamour Boys, for goodness sake they even borrowed Dynamos’ iconic nickname, of South African football.

Surely not after Evans Rusike’s goals single-handedly saved Maritzburg United from relegation and the club honoured him with the Player of the Season award, sending his stock on the South African Football Exchange, exploding to attract the interests of the big boys like the Amakhosi, who are battling to find a way back into the light after a season in the darkness.

Not after Costa Nhamoinesu proved his pedigree in European football, with outstanding performances for Czech giants Sparta Prague in the UEFA Europa League, where they reached the quarter-finals with our dreadlocked defensive powerhouse even making it into the tournament’s Team of The Week.

For goodness sake, Knowledge Musona’s goals and exploits, even powered KV Oostende into the play-offs for the Belgian top-flight league championship, where his club eventually missed a place in the 2016/2017 UEFA Europa League by just two points.

And, just in case you missed The Herald yesterday, not after the week that Musona, who signed off his Belgian adventure this season by providing an assist in the equaliser for his side in a 2-2 draw against eventual champions Club Brugge on May 22, wedded his sweetheart Daisy and wants a win tomorrow to kick-start his honeymoon.

Our talismanic forward, the most influential Warrior since Peter Ndlovu hung up his boots, is just coming from a Belgian season in which he made 35 appearances for his club, spending more than 2 495 minutes on the pitch, and scoring more than a dozen goals in all competitions for KV Oostende.

Come on guys, these aren’t the dark days of the turmoil of the Cuthbert Dube-leadership when the Warriors refused to board their plane to Blantyre, in an ugly battle against the ZIFA bosses over unfulfilled promises, only for them to embark on a road trip to Malawi and arriving just a few hours before their match against the Flames.

And, like true Warriors, they didn’t let that distract them, even as that image of their coach Callisto Pasuwa wrapped in a two-in-one blanket sent social media exploding, with some mocking him — as we usually do — while others sympathised with their coach, who duly rewarded them with a sweet victory in Blantyre.

Times have changed, a year is a long time in football, and Pasuwa now drives a sleek 4×4 double cab, Musona and Nhamoinesu have been to a shopping trip in an exclusive suburb of Paris where they picked items for $10 000 each and there is tranquillity in the Warriors’ camp.

But all that will count for nothing, absolutely nothing, if this Golden Generation — like the Dream Team before them — choke in this campaign and fail to qualify for the 2017 Nations Cup finals because the brutality of this game is that it has no place for teams that fail or who, like the South African national cricket team, perfect the art of choking when it matters most.

That is why tomorrow’s showdown against Malawi, just like that game against Zambia in ’93 when we just needed a victory at the same stadium to qualify for the ’94 Nations Cup finals, is very, very important for us.

It’s easy, given the talent that we have, to believe that Malawi will be rolled over.

After all, some of the fans have been saying, we doused these Flames in their backyard, when days were dark in our camp, and Billiat and Malajila provided the goals that gave us the victory.

But we forget that our ‘keeper Tatenda Mukuruva had a blinder in that game, Billiat’s cross-cum-shot which provided the defining moment of that game could have gone anywhere, and that Malawi — just like us now — had all the pressure on their shoulders because they were expected to win that match.

The tide has shifted, the pressure is now on our shoulders, and that comes with challenges and Malawi, down and out of this race, now have the freedom to play to their strengths knowing that, even if they fail, who cares?

We forget that for all their failings at home, these Flames are unbeaten away from home in these qualifiers — they went to Swaziland and held Sihlangu to a 2-2 draw and they went to Conakry and held Guinea to a goalless draw in a match that spilled into the 112th minute as the hosts tried to find a goal that never came.

There is some resilience in this Flames team, and that should be respected, and this is, after all, a Southern African Derby and we should know that these matches are usually tight because there is very little respect between the two sets of players.

But, of course, we can’t blow it now, when we have players who have the composure, others will even say arrogance, to score a pressure-packed penalty the way Musona did against Swaziland on Easter Monday.

Tomorrow, whichever way you look at it, it’s our date with destiny.

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