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Sharuko on Saturday
A lot of you folks were probably deep in your sleep in the early hours of Monday morning, having been drained by the drama of a classic 2017 Nations Cup final as another epic football thriller unfolded in Houston, Texas, complete with a spectacular live performance from Lady Gaga.

Certainly not the type of football that you saw in Gabon, as the Indomitable Lions roared back to smash the defensive barriers erected by the Pharaohs, but football with an American touch, where catching the ball isn’t a foul, but is actually an art in scoring points, a game of touchdowns, field goals, quarterbacks and running backs.

Super Bowl 51, the glitzy showdown in Houston, was watched by a record 114,4 million people in the United States and produced a titanic contest, as the New England Patriots came back from the dead to beat the Atlanta Falcons.

Some have said this was written in the stars, proclaimed by fate in an American sporting season which has seen its fair share of fairy-tales.

The Chicago Cubs came back from 3-1 down to beat the Cleveland Indians 4-3 and win their first Major League Baseball World Series title in 108 years and the Cleveland Cavaliers stormed back from 3-1 down to beat the Golden State Warriors 4-3 and grab the NBA title.

How do we explain the recurrence of 3-1 in all the major sporting codes finals’ scores — the Cubs down 3-1 and eventually winning 4-3 in Major League Baseball; the Cavaliers down 3-1 and eventually winning 4-3 in the NBA and the Patriots scoring 31 (3-1) unanswered points on Monday morning as they rallied from 28-3 to win 34-28 in overtime?

I can probably hear some of you say, why is this fellow from Chakari keeps going on and on about this baseball, basketball, American football stuff on a blog we expect to read about the real football?

Uyu mwana waMai Dorcas, akakura achifunga kuti katimu kebhora kepa mine kainzi Falcon Gold ndiko kaigona bhora zvomene, akakura achifunga kuti hapana mumwe mutambi wenhabvu angakunde David Mwanza na Mutambarika Chirwa, avo vaive vatambi vakuru vechikwata che Falcon Gold, akawana nguva dai atikwanira, I can hear some of you saying.

Why bombard you with American football, when CAPS United unveiled a kit that probably is a mockery of their status as champions and the nation was subjected to a messy divorce between ZIFA and Warriors coach Callisto Pasuwa?

In the week a football-mad prophet, whose passion for the game knows no boundaries and makes him dream of creating the next biggest club in this country in the next 10 years, told us he is qualified, by heavenly anointment, to be the technical advisor of his Yadah Stars?

AMERICAN FOOTBALL, AMERICAN MOVIE AND ALL THE DRAMA

There is a reason Super Bowl 51 was more than just an American football game — a showcase for the greatest quarterback in the history of this game, a glowing advertisement of the virtues of never-say-die spirit, a throwback to that unforgettable afternoon when CAPS United refused to be buried by an avalanche triggered by their greatest rivals by scoring three times in the last five minutes to tie the game — to me this week.

It’s because, as the ugly divorce between Callisto Pasuwa and his employers at ZIFA gave us football’s version of the acrimony triggered by the spectacular fallout between Stunner, a guy whose music I have a lot of time for, and his estranged wife Olinda, a movie about an American college football team, ‘REMEMBER THE TITANS’, provided a reminder of how badly we have handled our post-Gabon experience.

The blockbuster movie, starring Denzel Washington, is based on a true story of how an American college football team from T.C. Williams High School helped smash the barriers of hatred, built along racial divisions, which plagued the residents of the United States city of Alexandria in Virginia in the early ‘70s.

Washington plays the role of Herman Boone, an African-American handed the tough job of becoming the first head coach of a predominantly white school in town, taking charge of a racially-divided team, in a racially-divided city, with his assistant being a white coach, Bill Yoast, played by Will Parton, whose star players are Gerry Bertier, a white student, and Julius Campbell, a black student.

“In Virginia, high school football is a way of life, it’s bigger than Christmas Day,” Sheryl Yoast, the firebrand little daughter of assistant coach Bill, says in one of the enduring quotes of the movie. “My daddy coached in Alexandria, he worked so hard my momma left him, but I stayed with coach, he needed me on that field.”

Somehow, against all the odds, the T.C. Williams High School football team, known as the ‘Titans’, find a way to work with each other, for each other, thanks to the spirited efforts of their head coach Boone, and the acceptance of his white assistant that he can work under him, and they then march on to a 13-game winning streak to win their first state championship.

The more the Titans succeeded, the more they shattered the racial barriers that had, for years, divided their city and by the time the team fought for the state championship, things had changed forever in Alexandria.

But, amid the success stories, there was tragedy.

Gerry, the star linebacker, is badly injured — just before the match for the state championship — when his car is hit by another vehicle, leaving him paralysed from the waist downwards.

Upon receiving the news, Julius rushes to hospital, where Gerry lies in intensive care unit, and when a white nurse tries to stop him from coming in, the injured star tells her, “He is my brother, don’t you see the family resemblance?” in a powerful message loaded with irony given Gerry is white and Julius is black.

Gerry is forced to watch from his hospital bed as his fellow Titans capture the state championship, in a stunning triumph for the power of race relations, but stalked by tragedy throughout his life, he dies 10 years later when his car is hit by a drunken driver.

His funeral, which is the final chapter of the movie, brings back his old Titans’ teammates and coaches and Sheryl Yoast, now 10 years older than the firebrand little daughter of the team’s white assistant coach, provides a moving closing chapter to this movie based on a true story.

“Ten years later, Gerry died and that’s what has brought us here. People say that it can’t work, black and white, well, here we make it work. WE HAVE OUR DISAGREEMENTS, OF COURSE, BUT BEFORE WE REACH FOR HATE, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, WE REMEMBER THE TITANS,” she says as the former players sing a farewell song for their departed teammate.

WHERE THE TITANS UNITED, THE WARRIORS ARE DIVIDING

As I reflected on the Titans, and how they used football, their form of football, to change and unite their city, I was left wondering why our nation has suddenly become so divided by a team, and game, whose heroics just a few months ago, united us into this one happy nation and helped us forget all the challenges we face as a country.

The Internet has been raging with hate, Twitter has been exploding with hate, Facebook has been bubbling with hate, Instagram has been tainted with hate, the text messages to the local newspaper columns have been pregnant with hate messages, the readers’ feedback columns have been spreading a lot of hate as our country staggers in the darkness inflicted by the Warriors’ failure in Gabon.

Where we were celebrating, just a few months ago, united by our team’s stunning success story, we are now deeply divided, where we basked in the national pride of being the only Southern African nation that had made it to Gabon, we now find ourselves cursing our identity because we believe we didn’t go as far as we expected.

Where Callisto Pasuwa was being toasted as a national hero, just eight months ago, for finally leading us back into the light of the AFCON finals, after a decade of staggering in the darkness of mediocrity, the coach finds himself being dismissed as a hopeless failure, the first gaffer to fail to win a Nations Cup finals game with the Warriors, with some even saying he is just a chancer who believes more in the mysterious powers of an apostolic sect than tactics and trends that define modern football.

Some have even gone back to singing their old song that Pasuwa didn’t select his men on merit, with the best player rewarded with a place in the team, amid a raging storm the coach was being influenced, according to those critics, by the need to play those — like the out-of-form Elisha Muroiwa — who could be given a platform to showcase his talent and, possibly, get a chance to play outside the country.

Where Khama Billiat was being hailed as probably the best thing to happen to our football, since Peter Ndlovu, after playing a starring role in helping the Warriors qualify for Gabon, winning the Champions League title, playing at the FIFA Club World Cup, being named the second best footballer plying his trade on the continent and among the best XI African footballers, he is now being dismissed as a fluke, who thrives on flattering to deceive.

Even my GamePlan colleague, Hope Chizuzu, tore into Khama on Monday night saying the Warriors’ forward wasn’t as good as we have made people to believe.

Where Costa Nhamoinesu was being hailed, just a few months ago, as the best defensive Warrior since Kaitano Tembo and Dumisani Mpofu, the gangly Sparta Prague defender is being dismissed as a lightweight, a fluke who deceived us against lightweight opponents like Malawi and Swaziland only for his shortcomings to be crudely exposed by the thoroughbred pedigree of the Lions of Teranga and Carthage Eagles of Tunisia.

Where Philip Chiyangwa was being hailed as the maverick the game needed, as its leader, to unlock its potential and lead us from the darkness, and was given a standing ovation by the crowd at the National Sports Stadium last June after the Warriors secured their place in Gabon, the businessman is now being dismissed, by his critics, some of whom have been waiting for a window to punch him below the belt, as a hopeless leader who should leave his post as ZIFA president.

And, amid the tsunami of hatred and divisions, we have watched as ZIFA and Pasuwa engage in a messy divorce.

Instead of building on the progress we have made, from being a nation that spent 10 years failing to qualify for the AFCON finals to coming close to beating Algeria in Gabon, and how best we can improve from our show there, we have resorted to our primitive ways of fighting each other, tearing each other apart and insulting each other.

If we really believe we are so terrible, so hopeless, a football nation trapped in the depths of despair, what then do you think our biggest rivals — Zambia and South Africa — who never made it to Gabon, defeated by Mauritania and Guinea-Bissau, are thinking about themselves right now?

Why are they not tearing themselves apart, why are they not finding their identity to be such a shame, why are they not insulting each other and why are they already planning to ensure they will make it to Cameroon 2019?

Why can’t we borrow a leaf from the Titans, from Sheryl Yoats, from the people of Alexandria, and show the world that even if “people say that it can’t work — Shona, Ndebele, Whites, Chewa, Ngoni, Tumbuka, Zulu, Tonga, Yao etc — well, here we make it work. WE HAVE OUR DISAGREEMENTS, OF COURSE, BUT BEFORE WE REACH FOR HATE, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, WE REMEMBER WE’RE THE WARRIORS.”

This world, isn’t as bad as we are making it appear.

And if you doubt that, take some time to watch the movie ‘The 33’, a true story of 33 miners who were trapped in a 121-year-old Chilean gold and copper miner in 2000, somehow, were all rescued alive and, in the tunnel that was their home for 69 days, 2000 metres underground, they left an inscribed message of hope that should unite us, “HERE LIVED 33 MINERS, GOD WAS WITH US.”

Of course, the Lord is with us, that’s why we were the only Southern African nation in Gabon and let’s derive pride from that and not this acrimony we are seeing.

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

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

Khamaldinhoooooooooooooooo!

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