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SHARUKO ON SATURDAY
THE whispers were starting to grow louder, a chorus of suggestions that Lionel Messi was slowly slipping into the twilight of his career — a genius beginning to be consumed by the vagaries of time as the extra-ordinary gifts that made him the best footballer of his generation start to abandon him.

The queue of influential figures in world football, saying the graph of excellence for the Argentine magician was now dipping downwards, was beginning to grow longer.

And its membership now had Brazilian legend Romario, Italian grandmaster Ariggo Sacchi and France’s former World Cup coach Raymond Domenech and some of the comments were brutal.

“I think he’s at the end, but he gave us so much, he was so magical,’’ said Domenech.

“It is easy to see that gradually he is losing his gifts. He insists on taking free-kicks even though Neymar takes them better, all so that he can continue to be the demi-god he has been.

“He has lost that spontaneity and strength in his dribbling.”

Time has a cruel way of reminding us of our mortality and, just a few weeks short of his 30th birthday, it was probably not unexpected that a super athlete like Messi could start to see some of the magic, which he used to take for granted, begin to fade from his bag of tricks.

And, of course like every other mortal, we knew a day would come that Messi — the poker-faced Rosario boy who defied growth hormone deficiency to become this iconic football star — would start to lose some of the special magic that has dazzled us for the better part of the last 10 years.

No super athlete lasts forever.

But, on Sunday night, those who have been quick to dismiss him as a force whose destructive powers have been gradually diminishing, accusing his supporters of being trapped in a web of denial and unwilling to see the shattering reality that this was the beginning of the end, were given a reality check by this diminutive superstar.

In a 90-minute show pregnant with quality in which he reduced Ronaldo, the Cristiano whose talents we fine-tuned at Old Trafford before giving him to the world, to such an average player in their enduring head-to-head battle for superiority it was probably the biggest mismatch in sport since Mike Tyson knocked out Michael Spinks in just 91 seconds in New Jersey in the battle for the world heavyweight boxing crown in 1988.

The world has, since that night in Madrid on Sunday, been fêting Messi with some even saying his spectacular first goal, a deft control, sudden change of pace to drive into the heart of the Real defence, cutting through the rearguard with surgical precision and then, without breaking stride, firing the ball home, was the stuff that only the very, very best in this game can do.

Incredible goal, superb technique, brilliant movement all combined to produce a goal of the very highest quality to provoke a volcano of noises from his believers that Messi, the thoroughbred from Argentina produced by a combination of Italian and Spanish immigrants, remained the greatest footballer the world has ever known.

Better than Pele, in their argument, the Brazilian superstar whose talents meant he played a starring role, at the young age of 17, to inspire his country to their first World Cup title in Sweden in 1958 and better than Alfredo di Stefano and Diego Maradona, the other products of Argentina’s incredible football-genius-making factory who left a massive impression on the game in the world.

TAKE A BOW TO THE GOOD PEOPLE OF ZAMBIA

Inevitably, the question of whether Messi was the greatest footballer ever — in the wake of his stunning El Clasico exploits — surfaced on the informative interactive forum that brings together Africa’s senior football writers and administrators administered by Kenya’s veteran journalist Collins Okinyo.

But while many were keen to talk about Ronaldo, Maradona, you name them, what struck me the most was a defiant post from a Zambian member of that forum who posted his views saying, as far as he was concerned, the immortal Godfrey “Ucar” Chitalu was his ultimate football superman.

It might sound outrageous, if not downright foolish, to many latter-day fans of football — whose minds have repeatedly been bombarded by images of Messi taking the game to another level with his magic — that someone could even dare bring in a player like Chitalu, for that matter, in a discussion centred on the Argentine genius.

But, five years ago, these are the same Zambians who united, as a nation, to refuse to swallow the global lie that Messi’s 91 goals in 2012 was a world record, for goals scored by an individual in a calendar year, as they produced credible evidence that their Chitalu had scored 116 goals in 1972 for club and country.

The goals included 15 in CAF competitions, including seven goals in one match in a nine-goal demolition of Lesotho side Majantja in a Champions League tie, for his club Kabwe Warriors.

Ninety one of those goals came in FAZ tournaments, including the championship, five in friendly matches, three in the NFL Trophy and two in the NFL Benevolent Fund tourney in a season in which Chitalu was named his country’s Footballer of the Year for the third time in five seasons as his quality shone through.

Maybe, the signs of his greatness had already been there, four years earlier, when — as a mere 20-year-old he was named captain of his first top-flight club Kitwe United and scored 81 goals for club and country in 1968 — in a season he was also rewarded with the Footballer of the Year gong, an award he would win repeatedly, including back-to-back in 1977 and 1978.

There will be millions, if not billions, of people from around the world who will ask, with some justification, as to what the hell these Zambian are smoking — with their sustained argument to keep on lifting Chitalu into a company that features someone like Messi, a football god in the eyes of many, who is beyond comparison.

But, for me, what is important here is the refusal by our neighbours across the Zambezi to be devoured by a virus that infects an inferiority complex in most us, when it comes to such debate, our blinkers can’t allow us to pause, for a moment, to take an in-depth look into those, among us, whose talent — if they had been afforded the chance to showcase it at such grand stages — would have been worthy mention when we discuss greatness.

In an era where millions of us even find shame in their identity as Africans, cursing fate as to why they were born black and not white, you have to give it to these Zambians, even if they might appear crazy to many, for the way they embrace their own, celebrate their heroes — especially superstars like Chitalu — and refuse to see their history, and records, dumped into the dustbins as if they never existed.

In an age when millions of us choose to narrow Roger Milla’s star-attraction at the ’90 World Cup in Italy to just his erotic dances on the corner flag after scoring a goal, rather than his genius which enabled a 38-year-old veteran to single-handedly find a way to carry his Indomitable Lions on his ageing shoulders and score decisive goals at that showcase, it’s refreshing we still have people like the Zambians who steadfastly refuse to turn their back on their heroes.

And, whether the world likes them or not is irrelevant because what matters to them is the substance of their belief that their Chitalu was simply special, incredibly talented, nothing will ever move them from that, and they will tell you if he was either a South American or European footballer the world would have been seeing him in a different light and conceding he was really, really special.

Until you give them another footballer, just emerging out of his teenage years who is made captain of his top-flight side and, in that season, who scores 81 goals while carrying both the burden of captaincy and leading the attack and, four years later, he beats that record by scoring 116 goals — including seven goals in a CAF Champions League match — you are unlikely to convince the Zambians to believe otherwise. And, for that, they will always have my respect.

THAT’S WHY, FOR ME, THE FLYING ELEPHANT WILL ALWAYS BE KING PETER

As I watched Messi soak in the love of a world that had started to look for another football hero, to reconcile with the painful reality that the Messi-era — with all its beautiful moments — had come and gone, I found myself being bombarded by so many questions, and few very answers, as to why we, the people of this country, have never believed that in Peter Ndlovu, God blessed us with a remarkable football genius who should be celebrated as one of the finest to ever play this game.

Why haven’t we, the people of this country, spiritedly defended Peter, as a football god whose name should always be there when the greatest footballers are mentioned, the way the Zambians will always throw Chitalu’s name into such discussions, and why we struggle to acknowledge that the Flying Elephant was someone very, very special?

Why do we, the people of this proud country, appear in a hurry to wipe out the memory of King Peter’s special contribution to football, both at home and in Europe where in 1992 and just a few months after celebrating his 19th birthday, this superstar of ours made history as the first African footballer to play in the English Premiership?

When the best Nigerian player of that era, striker Efan Ekoku, was only good enough to be playing for a Bournemouth side that was, by then in the lower leagues of England before his talent saw him strike a £500 000 move into the Premiership with Norwich City on March 26, 1993, the same year Coventry City were rejecting a £4 million bid from Arsenal for King Peter’s services, it should probably put into perspective how good our boy was.

Why do we, the proud people of this country, appear desperate to erase the incredible sights that King Peter displayed on the football pitch when, at the peak of his athletic powers, our boy wonder was being compared by the English media as the best thing to emerge on their shores since an Irish maverick called George Best exploded on the scene and charmed their spirits with his skills?

Why do we seemingly derive a lot of joy in the narrative that Peter Ndlovu played for a small English Premiership side and deliberately ignore the reality that Liverpool tried to sign him, as the club’s next John Barnes, after he became the first visiting player to score a hat-trick at Anfield since 1962, on March 14, 1995.

His third goal in that match was described by the British media as “something special, picking the ball up from halfway he slalomed his way through the Liverpool defence before unleashing an unstoppable strike that drew applause from the Kop.’’

And that he was such an important player at Coventry City that the club’s manager Bobby Gould quit when he was told the team was likely to sell King Peter?

At least, unlike us, the British acknowledge he was a genius and if you have access to YouTube, just check the goal that King Peter scored against Norwich City on September 26, 1992, and tell me if that isn’t a mark of greatness and, if that goal had been scored by Messi today, what the world would be saying, in lavish praise, for this Argentine superstar as the greatest player ever?

“The sun may have set on the Empire, but the stunning equaliser by Peter Ndlovu that earned Coventry a point proved there are still rich pickings in transfer imperialism,’’ journalist Phil Shaw wrote in his match report in The Independent.

“Saturday’s goal, Ndlovu’s third in six games, epitomised his dramatic improvement: blistering pace and perfect balance as he burst in from his wide-left position, a sublime shimmy in the style of Jimmy Greaves at his peak to make the Norwich keeper Bryan Gunn commit himself, topped off by a wonderfully composed finish.

“Bobby Gould, the present Coventry manager, later claimed that Ndlovu, with Ryan Giggs, was ‘just behind George Best’ in terms of ability. That was exaggeration bordering on sacrilege, but you could see what he was driving at. Ndlovu’s lifestyle also gives him an advantage over the young Best, of which more anon.

“Ndlovu, despite a Best-like moment of pure genius, is in a temperance league of his own.’’

And when Peter was involved in that tragic crash that killed his brother Adam, his former Coventry coach Gould issued a message that showed, almost 20 years later, he had never forgotten that goal against Norwich.

“My prayers go out for you Nuddy (Peter Ndlovu). Your goal vs Norwich last long in my heart. What a dribble and finish. Never to be forgotten,” Gould tweeted.

Or, surely, how do we as a people not even acknowledge — on the 25th anniversary of the year King Peter scored that super goal against South Africa in that 4-1 demolition of Bafana Bafana — that this boy was simply out of this world?

Boys, tisadaro, and as we salute Messi for his greatness and super goals let’s not forget, like our brothers across the Zambezi who have never forgotten Chitalu, that we were also blessed with someone so special he could score such super goals.

Maybe that’s why the football gods are angry, for our lack of appreciation for the gift they gave us, they will never give us another one.

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

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

Rushhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

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