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Ronaldo and it was virtually an insult to put the Portuguese in first place in the ballot papers for the 2012 Ballon d’Or.

JOSE Mourinho snubbed the 2012 Ballon d’Or gala on Monday night, choosing instead to watch his son play football, but even that did not take away the sparkle from an evening when the world once again took a bow to its finest football star.

Lionel Messi, the diminutive and iconic Argentine superstar, now viewed by many as the greatest footballer ever, continued his incredible journey, in rewriting the game’s history books, by becoming the first man to win four straight Ballon d’Or gongs.

Cristiano Ronaldo, the greatest European footballer of his generation, once again played the bridesmaid role, left to feed on the crumbs, as the peerless Messi ruled supreme on the grand occasion and took their head-to-head mismatch to 4-1.

Our correspondent, Hope Chizuzu, was one of the lucky guys who were in Zurich on Monday night to watch this drama unfold live. Interestingly, none of the three people who cast the Zimbabwean vote — Rahman Gumbo, Charles Mabika and Nelson Matongorere (according to the Fifa statement) — put Messi in first place on any of their ballot papers.

I would have voted for Messi, even though he didn’t win any title with club or country in 2012, because once again the Argentine talismanic forward took the game to a whole new level, touched virgin heights previously unexplored and cast a spell on everyone, Ronaldo included. So much has been said about Messi’s record goal haul of 91 in 2012, which overhauled Gerd Muller’s 40-year benchmark of 85, as the defining factor in the Ballon d’Or going to the Barcelona forward.
Nothing could be further from the truth.

Votes for the Ballon d’Or had to be cast by November 15 and by then Messi had 76 goals, having eclipsed Pele’s mark of 75 goals in a calendar year, by scoring twice in Barca’s victory over Mallorca that weekend. It didn’t trigger mayhem around the globe because it wasn’t a world record-breaking feat and Messi was still nine goals shy of Muller’s benchmark.

By the time Messi smashed Muller’s record, the votes had long been cast but it’s a measure of his greatness that he had already done enough to win a fourth straight Ballon d’Or in the year that Barca were deposed as Spanish champions and didn’t win the Champions League. Certainly, we didn’t simply need the quantitative effect the 10 goals that Messi scored, a month later to break Muller’s record, for us to anoint him as the best football player in the world last year.

Ronaldo won La Liga and, given that Real Madrid had to beat a super team like Barca to do so, with the Portuguese captain playing the talisman role, he deserved recognition.

But the World Player of the Year can’t be a domesticated title, purely rooted to what happens in the league championship race of one country, and while winning La Liga, the Premiership or Serie A is important, it can’t be the be-all-and-end-all.

The effect, which the successful player makes on the football fields in the year under review, has to spill beyond the borders of his domestic championship, be felt around the world and, crucially, be celebrated by the globe as the workmanship of a virtuoso craftsman.

Here, Messi was simply magical, and became the first player to score five goals in a Champions League tie against German side Bayer Leverkusen, in March, the same month that he became Barcelona’s all-time top goal-scorer with 233 goals.

By the end of the year, he had taken his club tally to 289 goals, and counting, and you get a feeling it’s a record that might never be broken again.

In sport, the line between success and failure can be very thin, sometimes measured by the width of a crossbar, as Messi realised that night in Barcelona when he slammed his penalty, at a decisive stage of the game, against the bar in the semi-final loss to Chelsea.

Sometimes a sport like football throws this bogey opponent, who simply refuses to be beaten by you, even on the occasions when your superiority is not in question, and Chelsea is that stubborn opponent to both Barcelona and Messi. Chelsea haven’t lost in four Champions League matches against Barcelona at the Nou Camp, which have all ended in draws, a remarkable record by any standards. Incredibly, Messi has never scored against Chelsea in eight games, spanning some 720 minutes, the longest barren run against any team that he has played in his professional career.

In that game, Barca had 72 percent of possession compared to Chelsea’s 28 percent; attempted 776 passes compared to 254 for the Blues; completed 660 passes compared to 117 for the London side; enjoyed an 85 percent success rate in passes completed compared to 46 percent for their rivals; had 22 goal attempts compared to just seven for the English side.

But, somehow, that game ended 2-2 and Chelsea, who had won the first game 1-0 in London, did not only qualify for the final but went all the way to win their maiden Champions League title.

It’s certain Messi and his Barca would have won the Champions League last year, if they had not run into their bogey side, but the fact that they didn’t, especially given all those incredible statistics about their superiority that night at the Nou Camp, doesn’t suddenly make both player and club less magical.

“The true measure of Messi’s brilliance is that there is a twitch of anticipation every time the ball rolls to his toes. You can feel this universal excitement in stadiums, bars and living rooms,” wrote British football writer, Paul Hayward, in the Daily Telegraph this week.

“He is his own genre. No rival can match his array of skills or claim to be a lesser version of him. This is what elevates him to the level of genius. Only he can run through six or seven barriers and bring such soft-shoed subtlety to the execution.

“The distinction there is between great (Ronaldo, Iniesta) and genius (Messi). And since a little buzz of expectation is felt every time his feet touch the ball, there is no choice but to count our blessings and keep awarding him this global recognition until he no longer deserves it.”

Messi’s father named him Lionel after being inspired by American singer, Lionel Richie.
Stuck On You was a sing-a-long ballad, released by Lionel Richie in ’84, three years before Messi was born, which hit number one on the adult contemporary charts that same year and made the Top 30 of both the R & B and country charts. You can feel, after what has happened in the past four seasons in which Messi has dominated the Ballon d’Or, that maybe Lionel Richie was singing for our generation, where we can’t do much but take a bow to the King year-in-and-year-out, that we are “Stuck On You” Lionel.

The Argument For Cristiano Ronaldo
While I would have voted for Messi to win the 2012 Fifa Ballon d’Or, what I find repulsive is the argument by those, within my camp, that the people who say Cristiano Ronaldo should have won the award are dreaming and hopelessly out of touch with football.

A number of contributors to this newspaper have come out in the open, this week, to sharply criticise Charles Mabika, who voted on behalf of the country’s football writers, Rahman Gumbo, who voted as national coach and mudhara wangu Nelson Matongorere, said by Fifa to have voted for the Warriors’ captain, for daring not to vote for Lionel Messi, on number one, on their ballots for the 2012 Ballon d’Or.

Matongorere has said he never voted, there was a mistake somehow, and you have to give him his benefit of doubt.

The critics have questioned how Mabika and Rahman somehow missed something that, in their view, was so obvious as to be seen by even a Grade Zero kid, that Messi was streets ahead of Ronaldo and it was virtually an insult to put the Portuguese in first place in the ballot papers for the 2012 Ballon d’Or.

Some of them even went on to say this showed that our national football was in the wrong hands because if the country’s most prominent football journalist and the national coach could miss the fact that Messi was miles ahead of Ronaldo, which they say can be seen by even a Grade Zero kid, then we are heading the wrong direction.

As much as my choice was Messi, I believe those who say Ronaldo did enough to win the coveted award, who include Charles Mabika, have a point and that argument needs to be listened to and appreciated rather than dismissed without looking at the value of their reasons.

To suggest that those who are saying Ronaldo was the best player in the world last year are just a cartel of day-dreaming lunatics, who have totally lost the plot, is as meaningless as trying to suggest that Sepp Blatter could become the next WWE heavyweight champion or win the next Olympic 100m sprint.

To dismiss those who are saying Ronaldo did enough, if not more than enough, to lay claim to be the best player in the world last year, simply because we are convinced Messi was better, is not only unfair but borders on dragging this arguments to the depths of primitivity.

To treat those who are saying Ronaldo played well enough, to deserve being crowned World Footballer of the Year in 2012, with contempt as if they are saying a whole load of garbage, is not only devoid of reason but certainly an act of selfishness that has no room in modern society.

To suddenly treat Ronaldo as if he had suddenly become some later-day Portuguese version of Marouane Chamakh or Junior Agogo, players so inferior they play in another world when compared to Messi, when the Real Madrid forward is as good as strikers will ever come, is dragging our arguments to the depths of stupidity.

To try and force the world to erase the iconic sights and sounds that Ronaldo produced on many a football fields last year, and pretend as if all that was very average and not good enough to win the Fifa World Player of the Year, would be heartless, if not downright foolish.

To try and suddenly pretend that Ronaldo’s contribution, on the field last year, was average, and not worth mentioning in the same breadth as Lionel Messi, because some of us want to make it a no-contest when it comes to the two, would be myopic.

The beauty about our world, just like football, is that it’s not one dimensional, like a 100m race, where Usain Bolt will run from Point A to Point B, in about nine plus seconds and be crowned champion of the world. Even though I would have voted for Messi, I respect those who say Ronaldo was good value for the 2012 Fifa World Player of the Year and I will defend their right for their arguments to be heard.

Ronaldo is the first player to score in seven consecutive El Clasicos and last year he scored his ninth and 10th goals, in 16 matches, against Barcelona, powered Real Madrid to the championship with their highest ever points tally (100) and they had the highest number of away wins, the best record of overall wins and the best goal difference in the history of this club.

He scored 46 league goals, for a team that won the championship beating the team that had two of the best three players in the world — Messi and Iniesta — and another iconic magician in Xavi, scored seven hattricks and recorded the fastest hattrick of the season with three goals in a dozen minutes against Levante.

Ronaldo scored the winning goal in El Clasico at the Camp Nou, which ended the contest for the league title, and overshadowed Messi in his home stadium in the biggest game of last season and, in October, he scored twice, in the 2-2 draw against Barca at the same ground, in the only points that the Catalans have dropped this season.

Incredibly, he scored against every team in La Liga and, for good measure, took Real Madrid, for the first time in many a season, into the semi-finals where they lost out on a penalty shootout lottery.
“If Messi is the best on the planet, Ronaldo is the best in the universe,” Mourinho told Portuguese newspaper, A Bola.

When you have a Fifa All-Star XI that somehow ignores the performance of Andreas Pirlo, for a club that ended undefeated all season in Serie A and a country that defied the odds to get to the final of the 2012 Euros, ignores Ashley Cole for all that he did for Chelsea in the Champions League and ignores all the Bayern Munich players, people have a right to ask questions.

When you have a system that rewards Pique, Dani Alves and Marcelo, merely for playing for fashionable clubs in La Liga, when you can’t narrow their contributions to anything significant in the year, then people also have a right to ask questions and their queries to be heard.

Farewell Gazza, Our Crocked Genius
The Last Man Standing, from the Special Class of ’98 that crashed at the final hurdle of the Caf Champions League after losing 2-4 in Abidjan on December 12, Desmond “Gazza” Maringwa, has finally waved goodbye to the game that he played with a touch of genius.

If Gazza had played this year, the 15th anniversary of the year when Dynamos came within touching distance of being crowned Kings of African football, that would have been something special and, possibly, the best way to say goodbye to his team and his fans.

It’s remarkable that he lined up in the same team, in that ’98 final in the second leg at the Felix Houphouet-Boigny Stadium in Abidjan, with his coach Callisto Pasuwa, with whom he played in midfield, carrying the load for a side that had been ravaged by the enforced absence of their skipper and talisman, Memory Mucherahowa.

He has also been coached by Lloyd Mutasa, who also lined up in that DeMbare midfield that afternoon in Abidjan, in a team that featured Chirambadare (Muzadzi), Dinyero, Shereni, Fulawo, Musanhu, Pasuwa, Ncube, Owusu (Masango) and Soma-Phiri (Mutambikwa) and, even though he was just 20, played the full 90 minutes of that contest.

Two weeks earlier, at the National Sports Stadium, Gazza had also played the full 90 minutes of a fierce contest against the Ivorians, which ended goalless, and he was flawless again in Abidjan before 50 000 hysterical Ivorians who believed this was their finest hour.

Interestingly, all the members of the Battle of Abidjan have lived to see the 15th anniversary of the year when they came within just one hurdle, just one scoring draw in Cote d’Ivoire at worst, to be crowned champions of African football.

You get a feeling that after what they achieved that year, coming from so far away to get so tantalisingly close to glory, winning in Maputo and in Nigeria, drawing in Accra and conceding just three goals in six Champions League group matches, they carry the blessings of a long life for what they did for their club and country.

That Gazza lasted this long, trying to defy the curse of injury to try and realise just a fraction of the football genius that was embedded in his veins, is something that should be celebrated, not only by the Dynamos fans, but for everyone who has a heart for this game.

That his injury struck when he was about to ease into his full range of football skills after years of learning the game, when he was about to explode into this awesome midfielder so good he was, in my humble submission, set to overshadow everything that we had seen on the domestic scene in terms of midfielders, makes his story so tragic and makes him so lovable.

You can’t help but imagine what Desmond Maringwa would have become, if he had been lucky enough to avoid that injury, and a lot of guys have taken time to speculate where his talents would have taken him.

To me, Gazza’s defining moment was during that ill-fated 2002 World Cup qualifier against Bafana Bafana, at the National Sports Stadium, on August 7, 2000, when he overshadowed Quinton Fortune, in a midfield battle that looked so lop-sided you would be forgiven if you believed Maringwa was the one playing in Europe.

He was only 22 then and the world was waiting to embrace him. I have always argued that if Fortune could go all the way and play for Manchester United, Gazza would have, barring that injury, played at that level, for such heavyweight teams, and it’s a real shame that fate intervened and decided otherwise.

Incredibly, the real Gazza, Paul Gascoigne was 24 when he was injured, in that ’91 FA Cup final, which meant that he didn’t realise the full potential of what he promised when he exploded onto the scene, at the ’90 World Cup in Italy, where he drove England to the semi-finals.

The English will always wonder what their Gazza would have become if that injury hadn’t struck. We will always wonder what our Gazza would have become if fate had not struck in such a cruel way and his football talent had bloomed to its full potential and, it’s at times like these, when you are thinking about all that, when you can’t help but like Desmond Maringwa.

He will forever be remembered as our crocked genius, and you don’t need to be a Dynamos fan to appreciate that, the greatest midfielder that we never had, the one that the football gods gave us, made us see a glimpse of his genius, and then took it away.

Too bad, isn’t it, but thanks Gazza for the memories and I always feel it was a privilege to have been there in that crowd at the Felix Houphouet-Boigny Stadium on December 12, ’98, when you were just 20, and played your heart for your club at the biggest stage of them all. Forever, the crocked football genius that we never had! Given that he has lived his life far away from controversy, and has already impressed in his stint as the head of the Footballers’ Union of Zimbabwe, you get a feeling Gazza is destined for greatness in leadership roles in our national game.

Guatemala Wins It And We Don’t
The Guatemalan Football Federation received the 2012 Fifa Fair Play Award, at the Ballon d’Or gala on Monday night, for what the world football governing body said was “giving a clear signal that unfair behaviour and match-fixing will not be tolerated in football.”

“The GFF thoroughly investigated three national team players charged with match-fixing and banned them for life in Guatemala based on the findings of a special investigation committee,” said Fifa. “The ban was then extended worldwide by the Fifa Disciplinary Committee.”

In the same year, Zifa suspended about 100 players and officials, on match-fixing allegations, and “banned” 15 others for life, but somehow our football chiefs were not honoured, for cleaning the game, in a year when the GFF was honoured for just banning three players.

We were not even among the three organisations short-listed for the award with the Uzbekistan Football Federation and Turkish club, Eskisehirspor, being the other two.

Maybe the difference between us and the GFF lies in two words that Fifa used when saluting the Guatemalan Football Federation: “thoroughly investigated.”

To God Be The Glory!

Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chicharitoooooooooooooooooooooooo!

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