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Mr Pagels

From Robson Sharuko in Frankfurt, Germany
ZIMBABWEAN sports journalists on a tour of the Bundesliga were this week stunned when a leading administrator in German’s top-flight league drew a blank when he was asked if he knew Klaus Dieter Pagels. During a question and answer session at one of the presentations made by the experts who have been talking about the thriving world of the Bundesliga, one of the Zimbabwean journalists asked whether the German official knew about a coach called Pagels.

“Pagels, Pagels who?” responded the official, clearly unaware about the identity of the man whom the journalist was talking about.
There was stunned silence in the room, an elegant suite on the fifth floor of the Deutsche FuBball Liga headquarters in the heart of Frankfurt, as Zimbabwean journalists digested the shock response.

A lot of questions, suddenly, were flying around among the visiting journalists.  If such a high-ranking official of the Bundesliga didn’t know about Pagels, a coach who came from this country as an expert and was mandated with developing football in Zimbabwe, then what did it say about the credentials of this man?

Alternatively, what did this say about German football that the technical leadership of the German Football Federation could second a man, who was a virtual unknown in this country, as an expert who could kick-start the development of football in a country like Zimbabwe?

After all, this man didn’t just end up trying to be a development expert in Zimbabwean football but was even given the task of leading the Warriors in the qualifying campaign for the 2014 World Cup.

As the excitement grew among the Zimbabwean journalists, who wanted to follow up on the question, another official sitting in the background then remembered Pagels.

“l know him, he was made national coach in your country after the national team had some problems, he is not well known here because he was involved in the schools here,” said the official.

Pagels is back where he belongs here, working at a school in this country, but he wasn’t the only former Zimbabwe coach that was at the centre of debates here.

When we were taken out for dinner by our hosts on Thursday night, just a day before we left Frankfurt for Augusburg, another ex-Zimbabwean coach, Rudi Gutendorf, came into the picture.

One of our hosts said he had recently read a book, on the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Bundesliga, where a chapter was dedicated to Gutendorf “who has been just about everywhere in this world coaching.”

But that wasn’t the interesting part.
“In that book they say he had a girl in every country that he coached, a girl in every town where his team would be playing an away match and the players even knew it because some of the time he would only come to join them in the morning, when they had been in camp, because he spent the night with his lady who lives in that town,” he said.

Now that Gutendorf coached 18 different national teams, including Zimbabwe, and six teams in the Bundesliga, you can imagine the number of his women if this is all true.

That might not been surprising, really, when one considers that even in the heart of Frankfurt, right next to some of the world’s biggest banks, is a red light zone.

“The lights you see on that building turns red and flash in the night,” our tour guide told us.
“That’s the red light district, there are about 2000 prostitutes who work there and pay their taxes because it’s recognised as a job here and they are certified because they go through all the health checks.

“There are about 500 boys who also work there as prostitutes.
“The rush hour, in the trade in that area, is lunch-time when the guys get out of the offices for a break and a meal.”
Wow!

Goodbye Frankfurt, hello Augusburg.