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Robson Sharuko Senior Sports Editor
FOR CAPS United, tomorrow’s Champions League homecoming show at the National Sports Stadium provides a stage for the Green Machine to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the year they started their adventure in Africa’s flagship inter-club football tournament.

And their fans, who have waited more than a decade to watch their beloved team play a Champions League match at home, with some still nursing the wounds inflicted by the Green Machine’s farcical expulsion from the tournament the last time they dined with African club football aristocracy, will be hoping tomorrow’s battle ends with the same triumphant celebrations that marked the beginning in 1997.

Back then, Makepekepe announced their arrival on the big stage of the Champions League in style, with a five-goal demolition of Express of Uganda in a first round, first leg showdown before more than 20 000 fans at the giant stadium.

Morgan Nkhathazo was the hero, scoring a hattrick, including two goals in three minutes, as the Green Machine crushed their opponents 5-2 on March 9, 1997, having all but ended the match as a contest in a first half they dominated as they raced to a three-goal lead with Nkhathazo (two) and Joe Mugabe on the scoresheet.

Powered by a star-studded forward line-up, whose ruthlessness had swept them to their first domestic league championship since Independence the previous year, CAPS United toyed with the Ugandan champions, with Alois Bunjira playing one of his best games for the Green Machine and fittingly capping it with a goal just after the hour mark.

Of that pioneer crew of Green Machine stars, the first CAPS United group to play in the Champions League, only midfielder Cheche Billiat — whose family would later provide the country with a gem of a forward called Khama, who could add a CAF Super Cup winners’ medal to his cabinet this evening — isn’t alive today to see Makepekepe coming of age.

Lloyd Chitembwe, who played the entire 90 minutes in that match, is today the CAPS United coach while his former teammates — goalkeeper George Mudiwa, Mphumelelo Dzowa, Silver Chigwenje, Dumisani Mpofu, Edelbert Dinha, Stewart Murisa, William Chari, Mugabe and Nkhathazo — are still around to bear witness to the historic occasion.

Although CAPS United lost the return leg 2-4 in Kampala, the Green Machine had inflicted the damage in their maiden Champions League battle at home and dumped the Ugandan champions 7-6 on aggregate in a high-scoring match in which the virtues of the Harare giants’ attacking prowess and the shortcomings of their defence were on display.

That this was CAPS United’s first international match in nine years, with the Green Machine having last featured in the old African Cup Winners Cup in April 1988, when they crashed to a 1-4 aggregate defeat at the hands of Kenyan side AFC Leopards, underlined the special nature of their triumph over an Express side, which two years earlier, had dumped Dynamos out of the Champions League.

Time might have moved on but, it appears, the more things change for Makepekepe, the more they stay the same.

For, in their maiden adventure in the Champions League, two of their players — Dinha and Mpofu — were caught up in a storm after Express filed a protest claiming they were ineligible to play in that match because they were still Blackpool players, but CAF dismissed that protest.

Last weekend in Maseru, influential midfielder Joel Ngodzo and Kudzi Nyamufukudza were barred from playing the first leg because of irregularities in their documents, but CAF have since cleared the duo to feature tomorrow.

Nkhathazo is now based in Canada but Chitembwe, usually the Green Machine’s most decorated son, who was always the unsung hero of a team whose attacking contingent grabbed all the headlines, remains in the trenches fighting for the cause of his beloved Makepekepe 20 years down the line, wearing a different robe as the tactical mastermind of their latest Champions League adventure.

When Chitembwe was handed a three-year contract at the beginning of last year, as a bonus for the way he turned around CAPS United when he was hired midway through the 2015 domestic season, he declared it was time for the Green Machine to start winning the league championship again and also to play in the Champions League. His critics dismissed him as someone who was merely dreaming, but a year later, he has made them all eat humble pie after he delivered Makepekepe’s first league title in 11 years and his men are now enjoying their Champions League adventure, needing victory tomorrow to book a high-profile date against five-time African champions TP Mazembe in the next round.

Their failure to score a goal in the first leg in Maseru means they are on a sticky wicket, given every goal scored by Lioli tomorrow carries its weight in goal as it could count double in the event of a draw, but Chitembwe is a man at peace with himself even though questions have been raised about his team’s shortcomings in an attack that will miss the cutting edge provided by the ageless Leonard Tsipa.

The veteran forward scored twice the last time CAPS United hosted a team from Lesotho in the Champions League, Lesotho Defence Forces, in a 4-1 triumph for the Green Machine in 2005, with Brian Badza and Cephas Chimedza getting the other goals.

Tsipa, Chimedza and Badza would score again in the reverse fixture in Maseru in a 4-3 victory as CAPS United completed an 8-4 aggregate triumph.

“I’m content with where we are in this contest because our fate is very much in our hands and, as you know, it becomes a different ball game when we play at the National Sports Stadium,” said Chitembwe.

“Football is changing and the notion that there are small teams, simply because they are from Lesotho or Swaziland is outdated and we have to change our mentality and respect whatever opposition we face.

“But I believe we have the right men and we have prepared well for this game and we will do well.”

Ngodzo’s return means Chitembwe, who will play with two strikers, will have to change his personnel and approach and it could see his latest star recruit, Ronald “Rooney” Chitiyo, being shifted to the wings, with Simba Nhivi joining Dominic Chungwa to share the burden of being the last line of attack for the Green Machine.

It’s unlikely to be a goal-feast, like the seven goals delivered that afternoon when CAPS United broke their Champions League virginity on March 9, 1997.

But for a team that has only lost one home game in this tournament in their history when they were beaten 1-2 by Orlando Pirates that same year, it’s difficult to see how the Green Machine can spoil the party to make the 20th anniversary of their dance in this tournament.