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Sharuko on Saturday PAUL GUNDANI did not have the poster boy appearance of Peter Ndlovu, or the striking boyish looks of Benjamin Nkonjera, but his raw power and incredible athleticism, was a dynamic package that made his football so beautiful it swept him into the hearts of millions of fans who saw him dance on […]
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Sharuko on Saturday FOOTBALL is such a very powerful game it sparked a war, known as the La Guerra del Futbol, between South American countries, El Salvador and Honduras, on July 14 1969, as the battle for a place at the 1970 World Cup triggered a deadly conflict of nations.
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On a chilly November night in 1998, amid the beautiful chaos that had greeted Dynamos’ historic qualification for the CAF Champions League final, I stood in the car park of the National Sports Stadium, consuming the events of a defining day in Zimbabwe football that would be remembered, and celebrated, forever. The wave of happiness, among […]
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Sharuko on Saturday THOMAS KWENAITE, one of the pundits on SuperSport’s weekly programme, “Soccer Africa”, on Thursday night said the Mighty Warriors could write one of football’s greatest fairy tales if they qualify for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
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Sharuko On Saturday THE end came where it had all begun, one sunny autumn morning in 2010, just two months before Boys from Brazil brought their samba football here, and the FIFA World Cup bandwagon rolled into Africa for the first time in 80 years.
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“I AM A VISIONARY, ZIFA WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN, ZIMBABWE’S WORLD RANKING WILL BE AMONG THE FIRST 50,” — CUTHBERT DUBE, SPEAKING IN 2010. THE BBC Focus on Africa programme reserved a segment, on Thursday night, to celebrate the return of Cape Verde into the top 50 of the FIFA world football rankings […]
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IT wasn’t beautiful, football’s version of a Berlin Wall built on the green grass of the National Sports Stadium, the Glamour Boys — like Muhammad Ali in the Rumble in the Jungle 41 years ago — adopting the rope-a-dope strategy and soaking in the punches thrown by a spirited rival.
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IT was supposed to be the week we should have spent analysing that epic battle, in which our brave Warriors stood toe-to-toe against a herd of charging Elephants, in a fiery contest which ended all square, on a sun-soaked spring afternoon at Rufaro last Sunday.
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THE last time I was in Conakry with the Warriors, Valinhos was the coach and Benjani the captain and — after 90 minutes — we celebrated that we had dared to take our hunt into the Elephants’ heartland, and emerged unharmed.
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ON the stage of the packed McDonald Hall in Mzilikazi on Thursday, Rahman Gumbo sat on my left side, his body shaking with grief, his soul tormented by pain and, now and again, I could hear him choking as he wept, overwhelmed by an occasion that made scores of old men cry.
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POOR Bongani Mafu must be wondering what the hell did he plunge himself into when he applied for, and got the tough job to coach Highlanders, with the mandate to rebuild this iconic Zimbabwe football institution and take it back to the top.
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ALOIS Bunjira and Ezra Tshisa Sibanda this week compared two high-profile matches abandoned in Zimbabwe and South Africa this year, because of power failure, and the sharp difference of how the countries’ football leaders reacted. The two football analysts observed that chaos characterised how
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Sharuko on Saturday THEY say you never know what you have until it’s gone and the world has been treated to a number of songs, over the years, centred around that theme, from the hard-core rap of Kanye West to the melody of Monica.
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OUR good friends at 53 Livingstone Avenue exploded in anger on Thursday, livid that we had dared to criticise Ashford Mamelodi, the FIFA development point man in this region, for his shocking, if not insulting, remarks about our 2018 World Cup no-show. Interestingly, ZIFA believe it’s within Mamelodi’s
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Sharuko on Saturday THE World Cup is a grand football festival for the entire globe even the rogue state of Rhodesia once took part, back in ’69, not as part of the African family, but via the back-door of the Asia/Oceania qualifiers.