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things have gone so well for me in Zimbabwe, they’ve made me feel so welcome, that I’m loving it. When I first joined Highlanders, they were 11th in the League. We won the title, retained it this year, we get regular sell-outs of 40 000. The interest is phenomenal.” – Eddie May

 

Last year, Eddie May marked the 10th anniversary of one of his greatest achievements, as a nomadic football coach who had worked in South Africa, Uganda, Malawi and Zimbabwe, when he guided Highlanders to the league championship in 2002.

Although this was the fourth straight league title for Bosso, in a period that they dominated the domestic football scene and matched rivals Dynamos’ four-peat league title winning run from ’80-’83, the championship won in 2002 felt really special.

If there were questions about Bosso’s triumph the previous year, when they edged city rivals Amazulu by just three points, Highlanders silenced all those who doubted their pedigree as true champions with a ruthless domination of the 2002 championship race. That Bosso team lost only two of their 30 league matches, 0-1 against Black Rhinos in Harare and 0-1 against Dynamos at Barbourfields, had the best defence, conceding only 14 goals, and the second best attack, as they piled on 72 points to win the league by a record 20 points.

Rhinos, who finished second in the championship race, could only get 52 points.
Significantly, it was the last league title to be won by Highlanders, in their four-year dynasty that started in the ‘98/’99 season, and the Bulawayo giants would have to wait for another four years, and the return of Methembe Ndlovu from the United States, to strike gold again.

While Eddie May had helped Bosso squeeze past the finishing line, in a tight 2001 race, the British coach could not get all the credit for that triumph, having arrived on the scene in July that year, and that was why he valued his success, the following year, even more. For in 2002, the Bosso team was Eddie May’s project from start to finish and, having won the marathon with so much to spare in their tank, the Coach of the Year returned home to Scotland for a winter Christmas holiday and gave a candid interview about his life in Africa.

“That was really touching for me. For a white man to get that award in Zimbabwe is something I’m very proud of,” he told one of the local newspapers in his homeland.
“Every other coach in this League is of black origin. Football is very much the working class game and it is dominated by blacks. I’m one of the very few white coaches to win the award and it means an awful lot to me to be as popular as I am. He (John Fashanu) knew I was out of work and persuaded a club called Zimbabwe Jets to take me on as manager. I went over there, did a reasonable job and Highlanders, who are the Manchester United of Zimbabwe football, took note and asked me to become their manager.  It honestly doesn’t concern me any more that I don’t have a job as a British manager.

“It used to, but things have gone so well for me in Zimbabwe, they’ve made me feel so welcome, that I’m loving it. When I first joined Highlanders, they were 11th in the League. We won the title, retained it this year, we get regular sell-outs of 40 000. The interest is phenomenal.”

What Eddie May didn’t know then was that he had made history by becoming the first foreign coach to win a league championship with a domestic club, in Independent Zimbabwe, it had taken 31 years for that to happen and, the following year, the British coach had done it all alone and in stunning fashion.

He wasn’t the first foreign coach to guide a Zimbabwean club, Polish gaffer Wieslaw Grabowski had come years earlier and created his own club that became a breeding ground for some of the finest football players to come out of this country.

But for all that Grabowski did in nurturing the likes of Alois Bunjira, Stewart Murisa, Norman Mapeza, Edelbert Dinha and Lloyd Chitembwe, it’s a fact that he never won the league championship with his Darryn T.

Clemens Westerhof also came before Eddie May but the Dutchman, who arrived with a huge reputation having guided the Super Eagles to their African title in 1994 and then taken them to within minutes of eliminating Italy from the second round of the ’94 World Cup, did not deliver the league title for Dynamos.
Eddie May did it for Highlanders, in an historic feat, and last year he marked the 10th anniversary of that golden year, in 2002, when his beloved Bosso swept everything before them, in a championship march that was rich in both quality and endurance and reaped huge rewards with a 20-point success gap.

Sadly, Eddie May died in the same year that he was marking his milestone achievement with Highlanders, passing away peacefully at home in his sleep, in April last year.
Exactly a year after his death, Welsh club Cardiff City, the team he also coached with distinction in the early part of the ‘90s and famously led to an FA Cup victory over Manchester City in ’94, ended 53 years of waiting by winning promotion into the English Premiership in an historic feat “that made grown men cry.”
Eddie May was 68, when he breathed for the last time, and in the book where they will write about the legends and heroes who have made Highlanders into this very special Zimbabwean football club, in the past 87 years, a page, or probably a chapter, will be reserved for this British coach.

Kevin Kaindu And The Zambian Revolution
Kevin Kaindu is the second foreign coach to take charge of Highlanders, after the turn of the millennium, and arrived last year to inherit a big team that had somehow lost its way, in search of the path back to greatness, and had gone for five years without winning the league title. Unlike Eddie May, Kaindu didn’t arrive in alien territory, he had played for Bosso before, and had been outstanding as a player, and knew the club very well — the politics, the supporters, the leaders, the elders, the rivals, both inter-city and intra-city, the Battle of Zimbabwe and the Battle of the Cities.

He made a huge impact, in his first year in charge, and his team lost only one league match, ended up with the same number of points as champions Dynamos only to lose the marathon on goal difference and they did not lose a league match at home all season.

Kaindu ended without a trophy, in his first season at Bosso, but made a huge impact, opening a big window of hope that tomorrow would bring better tidings and he earned the respect, of not only those who love Highlanders, but a lot of neutrals who were charmed by his professionalism.
The football writers loved him, because he was always ready to grant them an interview, and most of the things that he said were not controversial but good stuff that you expect to hear from a serious coach, from a young coach and from an ambitious gaffer.

His deep religious beliefs also earned him a lot of friends, both within and outside the Bosso circles, and his iconic phrase, “it shall be well” provided one of the big sound-bites for a memorable championship race that went all the way to the final day.

If last year was one for building his foundation, then this year was the one for reaping the rewards for his work and that Bosso survived to battle for another year, with virtually all their key players still in their ranks, appeared to give them the edge over everyone, the champions included, in this season’s championship race. Unlike DeMbare who lost Denver Mukamba, Simba Sithole and Rodreck Mutuma to Super Diski teams, Bosso emerged out of the off-season transfer madness with their squad untouched and Masimba Mambare, who was voted as the second best player in the Premiership last year, returned to lead the assault again.

Goalkeeper Arial Sibanda, good enough last year to be trusted by Rahman Gumbo to be in goals in the Warriors’ decisive 2013 Nations Cup qualifier against Angola in Luanda, defensive rock Innocent Mapuranga and gritty midfielder Mthulisi Maphosa were all on the Soccer Stars of the Year calendar and all returned for duty for this season.
The odds favour Kaindu and his men to win the league championship but nothing can be taken for granted and his team, for the first time since his arrival, lost a league match at home when they were beaten 0-1 by a Motor Action side that had been humiliated 0-4, at home by Harare City, in their last match. The Mighty Bulls hadn’t won a league match this season, drawing one and losing two, when they arrived in Bulawayo but they somehow turned it around and powered to a stunning victory against Bosso in their backyard despite playing for part of the match one man down.

On Thursday Bosso lost, in the Independence Cup final, to their nemesis Dynamos when a dreadful error by ‘keeper Sibanda gifted Murape Murape the chance to win the match, which Bosso dominated for long periods, to give the Glamour Boys a psychological edge ahead of the Battle of Zimbabwe at Rufaro tomorrow.
Kaindu was right to feel aggrieved by the referee’s diabolical decision to rule out what looked like a perfect goal by Beven Chikaka, which would have given Bosso the lead and changed the complexion of this game, and he was right to say the match officials had a bearing in his team’s loss.
It’s on such fine lines that seasons are defined and dreams are fulfilled or shattered.

But for the Zambian to suddenly threaten to quit his job, on the basis that he was being frustrated out of Zimbabwean football by officials who were hostile to his interests, and by extension his team’s progress, was a bit unfortunate if not downright childish.
What this showed us was that Kaindu was now losing his internal battles to contain the demons that have been stalking him since his side’s remarkable run last year failed to bring home any silverware.

When you lose just one league game, in 30 matches, you expect far better rewards than finishing with the silver spoon and while Kaindu has publicly displayed a picture of calm, his explosion on Thursday evening showed us that he has been fighting serious internal battles, within himself, and hasn’t fully recovered from last year’s failed bid to win the league championship.

Coaches, especially those who have been players like Kaindu, know that one big refereeing decision will go against them one day and they live for that, prepared to handle that rainy day, because no matter how much we dream of having fair referees, the reality is that one strange or odd decision will be messed up. But you can’t walk away from a project on the basis of that but you have to take it on the chin, like a true fighter, and pray for a better day tomorrow.

By threatening to walk away, and painting the referees as a collective unit who are hostile to his interests and, by extension, to those of his club Highlanders, Kaindu is not sending the right message to his players and the last thing he needs is to see them withdrawing into a shell and start to believe the whole world is against them right now.
That Kaindu is a foreign coach has no basis whatsoever to make him feel, or even imagine, that local referees would be out to undermine him and some of their decisions, like his expulsion in Triangle in a game his team won, and the disallowed goal on Thursday, are a cocktail of shadowy measures to frustrate him out of the local football landscape.
This foreign thing, for Zambians and Malawians, doesn’t work here and it’s very likely that, on close analysis, he will find that some of these referees, too, hail from those parts of the world and, crucially, some of the players, too, are in the same bracket but they have never been targeted for that.

Football will always throw up big controversial refereeing decisions, some go in your favour, others don’t, but over the course of time, they seem to level themselves in some way and if coaches quit, because the referees have messed it up, then the England coach at the ’86 World Cup would have sued Fifa for allowing Diego Maradona’s Hand of God goal to knock them out of the quarter-finals.

Or, if we follow Kaindu’s militant approach, England would have boycotted the next World Cup finals in Italy, on the basis that the globe or Fifa were hostile to their interests because, in the biggest game between the English and Argentina, since the outbreak of the Falklands War, a referee chosen by Fifa allowed Maradona to score a goal with his hand.

But that the English didn’t boycott the next World Cup was a massive demonstration of his respect for the values of football, even on the occasion where their interests had clearly been undermined by a poor call by the referee, and in Italy in ’90, they shone like a beacon, thanks to the genius of Paul Gascoigne and the goals of Gary Lineker, and were unlucky to lose a semi-final on penalties to Germany.

Kaindu has to soldier on and spend his energy working on his forwards like Chikaka, so that they don’t miss an opportunity like the golden one he got at the very end of their tie against DeMbare, and on the psychology of his players so that they begin to believe, once again, that they can beat the Glamour Boys. If he can do that, he has a very good chance of emulating Eddie May as a foreign coach who guided Bosso to greatness and that is a greater legacy than being remembered as the coach who walked away, when the going got tough, and the cruelty of football is that he will be reminded, at every turn, that he didn’t win anything.
And he didn’t beat Dynamos.

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Remembering Another Zambian Coach Who Came Close
This year marks the 10th year when Zambian coach, Keegan Mumba, came very close to guiding Dynamos to the league championship but, after a memorable campaign, could only settle for the bronze medal with AmaZulu winning their only league title.

DeMbare ended the season three points adrift of AmaZulu but it’s easy to forget that things could have been so different if the Glamour Boys hadn’t been ducked three points for using Edmore Mufema in a league match against Lancashire Steel on August 3, 2013.

Dynamos won that match 2-1 with Agent Sawu and Eddie Mashiri on target but the inclusion of Mufema in that game caused serious problems and they ended up being ducked the three points. Mumba’s men had only lost two of their opening 16 games, the very first opening league matches against Rhinos and CAPS United, and were unbeaten in the next 14, including nine wins, leading up to the tie against Lancashire Steel.

But after they lost their points against Lancashire Steel, they struggled to recover and lost three of their next four league games against Sporting Lions, Chapungu and Njube Sundowns, which all but sealed their fate in the championship race.
It’s a safe bet to suggest that things could have been different for Mumba and his men, had they not lost those three points, it’s likely that they would have won the league championship with a lot to spare in their tank.

Those who saw them perform at Barbourfields on August 24, 2003, when they turned on the power in the second half to score three times through James Matola, Musareka Jenitala and Mufema, in a 3-0 victory over Bosso, will agree that they were playing the game at a different level.
But in his moment of grief, knowing that he had come mighty close but very far from winning the championship only to be denied by the boardroom, Mumba didn’t threaten to walk away from the domestic game or raise concerns, laced with innuendoes, that the system was hostile to him because of his foreign origins.
He took it all on his chin and continued to work and has become a better coach for it and was in the Champions League this year with Zanaco after guiding them to the league title last year.

ZBC Gets It Right With A Good Show
There was something good about ZBC’s live coverage of the Independence Trophy final — the picture quality was excellent, the cameras kept pace with the action and Charles Mabika and John Phiri looked great in those dark suits in the studio.

It’s refreshing that the guys at Pockets Hill have decided to follow the international trends and studio anchors and guests have to be presentable, in designer suits, and not the old-fashioned ways where some would come dressed in all sorts of funny and colourful attire picked from the flea market.

I think Happison Muchechetere should ensure that there are always, at least, three people in the studio, an anchor and his two guests, so that opinion on key issues can be split rather than just having two where the guest ends up just rubber stamping what the anchor suggests.

While Mabika was brilliant in his studio coverage, Stanley Katsande, for some strange reasons, kept getting the name of Allan Tavarwisa wrong and, until the 75th minute, called the forward Madzore.

Where this Madzore was coming from, no one knows, but it was repeated so much that it ceased to be a mistake and that’s sad because the commentator has to lead the way, in identifying the players, for the people watching at home to follow.
ZBC, too, should be able to freeze key moments and the producers don’t have to just throw in the replays, when the game is alive, but wait for the right moments, when the game is dead, for such things.

Incredibly, one of the most decisive moments of the game, when Njabulo Ncube head-butted Gift Bello, was never captured on television and we didn’t get to see a replay of that moment to give commentators the chance to make a detailed analysis of what had happened.
Too bad, but things can be improved.

Mukamba Challenged To Rise
Bidvest Wits coach, Clive Baker, has challenged Denver Mukamba to rise and justify that he deserves a place in the starting XI of his team rather than be a bit-part player that he is today.

It’s never easy, for one who had an average 15 000 souls hero-worshipping him and making him feel special week-in-and-week-out, to suddenly play before virtually empty stadiums, where no one shows you love, and that transition can be a difficult one to manage for the young players.

But coaches, too, have their faults and Dutchman, Johaan Neeskens, somehow was freezing Method Mwanjali out of the Mamelodi Sundowns team, saying he wasn’t good enough, but the arrival of Pitso Mosimane has seen Yellow become not only a regular but also wearing the captain’s armband at times. Baker won the Nations Cup with South Africa in ’96 but this is 2013 and this is club football, a different ball game altogether, and that he has failed to hold on to a job, on a long-term basis since his glory days, raises questions about the coach.

It’s about judgment and every man has his opinion and yesterday someone asked me who did I think will make the biggest impact in the domestic Premiership this year and I said Boban Zirintusa and he laughed at me as if I had suddenly gone mad. But that’s my opinion, flawed as it might be, and it’s driven by what I am seeing and the technique, the movement and the skills that I have seen Boban parade, as he begins to adjust to playing for a team like Dynamos and in midfield and not as a centre striker, has made me believe he has his special gifts.
I might be wrong, just like the referees and the coaches, but that’s the way this game is.

To God Be The Glory!
Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chicharitoooooooooooooooooooo!
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