IS FOOTBALL REALLY A GAME DRIPPING IN PURITY AND INNOCENCE?

SHARUKO MIDDLE 16 APRILMATTHEW SYED, the award-winning British football writer was, just like me, born in 1970 — a defining year for the game when the FIFA World Cup was beamed on television, in colour, for the first time in the history of this iconic global sporting festival.

And, of course, it was also the year that the immortal Pele waved goodbye to the World Cup, in fitting style, as he combined with his Brazilian magicians — dubbed by many pundits as the finest national football team ever assembled — to touch the heavens with a 4-1 demolition of Italy in the final in the Mexico City sunshine.

Syed has worked as a broadcaster for the BBC and Eurosport while also writing for the Times of London, since 1999, and his finest hour came in 2009 when he was honoured as the Sports Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards ceremony.

I have followed Syed’s journalistic work for some time now, bonded by the fact that he is my age, and on October 28 last year, The Times of London, published a fascinating article he penned on Roman Abramovich, and the English heavyweight club the Russian billionaire owns, Chelsea.

Given all the drama that has transpired in Zimbabwe football in the past two weeks, triggered by that article carried by our sister newspaper The Sunday Mail — the biggest circulating weekly newspaper in this country —revealing that Warriors’ coach Callisto Pasuwa hadn’t been paid his salary for two months, I found Seyd’s article quite interesting.

“The money that has bankrolled Chelsea these past 12 years, which has brought multiple trophies while sanitising the image of one of the most dubious individuals ever associated with British sport, was corruptly amassed,” wrote Syed.

“When Abramovich is shown in the directors’ box, commentators talk almost affectionately about his eccentricity, charming grin and beautiful young wife. He is portrayed as a lover of Chelsea.

“Nothing could be farther from the truth. This is a manipulative and ruthless chancer whose money was gained through dubious means, and whose calculated purchase of Chelsea had nothing to do with love of football.

“How often do we debate the motives of Abramovich, or the strategic aspirations of Abu Dhabi’s ownership of Manchester City, or Qatar’s foray with Paris Saint-Germain? Football has become a pawn in some of the highest stakes games of all, political and strategic: isn’t this part of its meaning, too?

“Many Chelsea fans bitterly regret the identity of their club’s owner; others tolerate his presence. But there are some who see it as a badge of honour to defend his past. ‘What about the owners of other clubs?’ they say. ‘Are not all rich people at least a little dubious?’

“There is nothing anti-Chelsea about condemning Abramovich. Indeed, many of those who love the club are the most outraged that it should have been tainted by him.

“Even if it is difficult to figure out how to obtain redress for the Russian people from the swindle they suffered in the 1990s, it is surely obligatory to resist the way that Abramovich has been so seamlessly integrated into British cultural life.”

That is Syed’s damning verdict of Abramovich — a man who the Times of London said, in their report in 2008, admitted to paying billions of dollars for political favours and protection fees to obtain a big share of Russia’s oil and aluminum assets as shown by court papers obtained by the newspaper.

According to the same newspaper, Abramovich “famously emerged triumphant after the ‘aluminium wars’, in which more than 100 people are believed to have been killed in gangland feuds over control of the lucrative smelters,” in Russia.

This was the man who, in 1992, was arrested for theft after a trainload of diesel was diverted from its destination, whom a Swiss investigation linked to loan fraud involving about US$4.8 billion, who was sued by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in January 2005 over a US$14.9 million and whose companies had allegedly violated antitrust laws in Russia.

But isn’t it also true that, for the majority of Chelsea fans, the Russian billionaire — for all the darkness that Syed, and others, have painted about his past, including claims he looted the natural assets belonging to Russia because of his powerful political connections — is hailed as the ultimate saviour whose investment awoke their giant club from its slumber?

The one whose arrival, and investment, financed Chelsea’s first league title in 50 years, and only the club’s second in history, in 2004/2005, whose funds, and the major signings the money brought in, have powered the Blues to four championships, their only UEFA Champions League crown and the UEFA Europa League title, four FA Cups, three League Cups in a haul of 13 major titles.

Maybe, the fans — whose hearts are only guided by success and emotions — aren’t the best people to use to provide judgment in such issues pregnant with such sensitivity.

They are likely to be swayed by the success stories, with little reserved for issues to do with morality, and given that Chelsea have succeeded so much — since Abramovich took over — the fans are certain to only be interested in the things that he has done well, rather than questions over his dark past, because their romance with him starts and ends with the time when he became one of them.

BUT WHAT DO THE PLAYERS, INCLUDING THE SKIPPER, THINK ABOUT ROMAN?

Chelsea captain John Terry is a man who — when he finally leaves a club he has served with distinction, both as a leader and an inspirational defensive pillar — will certainly be honoured with a statute outside Stamford Bridge for his contribution to the team.

Three years ago, on the anniversary of Abramovich’s 10-year stint as the owner of Chelsea, Terry addressed the issue of the Russian billionaire and his involvement with the Blues.

“There are probably no words that can put into context what Mr Abramovich has done for this football club,” Terry told Chelsea’s official magazine.

“He has obviously transformed the team but also, behind the scenes, he has done so much, not least the training ground.

“When you speak to him, he talks football. He wants to know how the club can improve and what he can do to improve it. He wants to keep pushing on. He wants to win every trophy, every single year. That is his target every season.”

Mark Worrall, Kelvin Barker and David Johnstone penned a book, ‘Making History Not Reliving It, A Decade of Roman’s Rule At Chelsea’, to mark Abramovich’s 10 years as the owner of the Blues, which provided a lot of insight into the Russian billionaire.

One of the key players, during that period, legendary midfielder Frank Lampard, provided a contribution to the book.

“He’s been fantastic for Chelsea,’’ Lampard said of Abramovich in that book.

“We were a big club before he came and that was one of the reasons I joined (in 2001). When I came, the team was strong — OK, so we weren’t quite in first place but we weren’t far away, BUT HE TOOK US TO A WORLD LEVEL.

“We can travel to play in places like China and America and be supported by thousands, and we’ve now won everything that’s worth winning, and basically it’s all down to him.

“He hasn’t done it from afar, and everything he does is in what he sees as the club’s best interests. He loves Chelsea Football Club; he’s just like any other supporter in as much as he’s happy when we win and upset when we lose.

“He’s in the dressing-room with us and is genuinely interested in what the players think about the games we play, how we’re playing and the players’ views on all things Chelsea. If he could, he’d be out there on the pitch with us and, as a Chelsea footballer, there’s nothing better than seeing the owner of the club you’re playing for being as involved and as interested as he is.

“I’ve been at other clubs and I’ve seen it in other teams where there has been a big, big difference between the owner and the players but with Mr Abramovich he’s completely on our level.

“THERE’S NO DOUBT ABOUT IT, WITHOUT HIM, CHELSEA WOULD NOT BE WHERE THEY ARE TODAY. I’VE GOT NOTHING BUT HUGE RESPECT FOR HIM.”

And, as Chelsea celebrated their league championship triumph last year, their then manager, Jose Mourinho, the man who laid the foundation of success by driving them to that success story in 2004/2005 that ended 50 years of waiting, said something that was quite interesting.

“Some players did some, some players did others, some managers did some. Mr Abramovich is the only one that won every title. So if he has replicas, he needs a big house,” said Mourinho as he lavished praise on the club’s owner.

“I think I am in the right place, I stay here until Mr Abramovich wants me to stay. The day he wants me to go, I go.”

IS FOOTBALL REALLY A GAME DRIPPING IN INNOCENCE AND PURITY?

We all crave for a game that is very beautiful, as Pele called it, wrapped in innocence where the leaders are people like the Pope, where the players are people like the cardinals, not those ones who sodomise little boys under the cover of their churches, where the supporters are the priests and the songs from the stadium are the beautiful hymns that we get from the Bible.

We all dream of a game that is dripping in purity, where everything is based on innocence, where morality rules and is the be-all-and-end-all of everything, where there are no dark characters like those found in The Godfather trilogy and where only the good guys operate.

We all pray for a game that gives us, all the time, our David Livingstone moment and, like the Scottish missionary in his speech to students at Cambridge University on December 4, 1857 after he had come back from seeing the majesty of the mighty Victoria Falls, can also say “no one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed before, a game so lovely must have been gazed upon the angels in their flight.”

But, even in our quest, if not obsession, to find an exclusive island of innocence in this game, we cannot be blinded by the vast ocean of impurity that dominates world football and as much as we might try to wish it away, the reality is that this is a game that is deeply embedded in controversy and wishing that it’s dominated by innocence would just be subjecting ourselves to a life in perpetual denial.

The new FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, has only been in office since February, swept to power on the promise that he will cleanse a game that has been heavily burdened by the weight of corruption scandals, but — just two months after he assumed office — the ghosts have come to haunt him.

The Swiss lawyer has been sucked into the controversy of the so-called Panama Papers, after he signed off a contract during his time as the UEFA secretary-general, to two people who have now been exposed as being part of an international bribery cartel.

His predecessor, Sepp Blatter, the man that we rolled out the red carpet for when he visited this country a few years ago, was blown away by a hurricane of scandals, including that questionable million-dollar payment he authorised for the then UEFA boss Michel Platini, and could possibly face a criminal charge.

Platini was supposed to be his heir apparent, the man who was being groomed to take over from Blatter when the Swiss strongman finally called time on his lengthy rule of world football, the charming prince whose silky skills illuminated Euro ’84 and the ’86 World Cup, who organised the ’98 World Cup in his homeland in France, but he was also blown away by the same hurricane.

Joao Havelange, the man who led FIFA from 1974 to 1988, was unmasked to have been an associate of Brazilian criminal Castor de Andrade, the head of an illegal gambling association who was sentenced to six years in prison in 1994 for racketeering.

Seven years earlier, Havelange had even written a character reference for Andrade, describing him as an “amiable and pleasant, loyal, good family man, a devoted friend, and is admired as a sports administrator,” and authorised Andrade to use this statement as he deemed fit.

Havelange’s daughter, Lucia, was married to the former Brazilian Football Federation chief, Ricardo Teixeira, for 30 years, and a Swiss prosecutor recently revealed that Teixeira and Havelange, during their time on the FIFA executive committee, took more than US$41 million in bribes in connection with World Cup marketing rights.

Hundreds of football leaders, including Zambian legend, Kalusha Bwalya, were unmasked as having received huge payments, as much as US$50 000 each, by a slush fund that was operated by former FIFA vice-president, Mohamed Bin Hamman, which the Sunday Times of Britain claimed was meant to help the Qatari football official win the FIFA presidency with Qatar winning the 2022 World Cup hosting bid.

In June 2014, Bwalya accepted he received the money but said it was a loan to help FAZ, who needed the funds for their development activities, even though the money had, curiously, been paid into his personal account.

“It was a loan which I had to pay. When I said I had the money they said no, and that’s where we are.

“Bin Hammam is a personal friend of mine, I knew him for a long time,” Kalusha said.

“He said to me that ‘if you need any help’, let me know, so he said he was going to help me. That is why I wrote him that e-mail so that he can help us with that amount. He, however, did not send us that amount (the US$80 000 as stated by the Sunday Times), he sent less (US$50 000).”

Two years earlier, Kalusha had been hailed as the Messiah of Zambian football after Chipolopolo, under his leadership of FAZ, stunned the continent — and the world — by being crowned the champions of African football in Gabon, ironically the site of the nation’s greatest sporting tragedy when that plane crash, off the coast of Libreville in 1993, killed a generation of the country’s finest footballers.

TWENTY YEARS AFTER TONY ADAMS’ SHOCK ADMISSION

Twenty years have passed since Tony Adams, the man who spent 22 years of his playing career at Arsenal, admitted that he had spent the better part of his time on the football pitch battling alcoholism.

He would subsequently be arrested for driving while under the influence of alcohol, and was sentenced to three months in jail, with Arsenal sticking with him, as their skipper, as he served his time in prison.

Adams emerged from jail, to lead the Gunners to success in the league championship, and — as a tribute to his contribution to the club — Arsenal erected a statue of the defender outside the Emirates where he takes pride of place alongside Thierry Henry.

Maybe, Paolo Rossi did even more — emerging from being one of the fall guys of the match-fixing scandal that swept Italian football in 1980 which saw him being banned from the game for two years — to play the starring role of leading Italy to World Cup triumph in 1982.

They even honoured him, after his six goals powered the Italians to glory — with the Golden Ball, for the best player at that World Cup, Golden Boot, for his goal tally, the European Footballer of the Year and the World Footballer of the Year.

Pele named him one of the 125 living football legends.

In Naples, they don’t remember a Diego Maradona who was always high on drugs and a regular patron at brothels, during his time at Napoli, but an Argentine genius who transformed their beloved team from being just another ordinary club to one that won the Italian championship and silverware in Europe during a golden spell for the club.

They say the South Africans bribed some people to win the rights to host the 2010 World Cup but our brothers from across the Limpopo say they didn’t and, for those who were lucky to be part of that global football festival when it rolled into Mzansi, what they will always remember will be those incredible sights and sounds.

And it seems like only yesterday when Shakira was showing us that, indeed, hips don’t lie, as she sang that World Cup theme song:

“When you fall get up, oh oh

If you fall get up, eh eh

Tsamina mina zangalewa

‘Cause this is Africa

Tsamina mina, eh eh

Waka waka, eh eh

Tsamina mina zangalewa

This time for Africa”

Six years later, it still rings in our ears.

To God Be The Glory!

Come on Warriors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Khamaldinhoooooooooooooooooooo!

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