Zimpapers Logo

ICONIC CONTRIBUTION . . . Zimbabwe international footballer Benjani Mwaruwari’s superb hat-trick for Portsmouth against Reading at Fratton Park 10 years ago is being celebrated as one of the English Premiership’s great moments

Robson Sharuko Senior Sports Editor
ZIMBABWE’S massive contribution to sights and sounds that have helped the English Premiership transform itself into the world’s richest and most popular football show is being acknowledged and celebrated ahead of the league’s 25th birthday anniversary tomorrow.

The Premiership, whose latest edition exploded on Friday night with a seven-goal feast at the Emirates, turns 25 tomorrow and has evolved into the most watched top-flight football league in the world with every game now attracting over a billion viewers around the globe.

And our heroes’ part in that is being celebrated.

“As the Premier League marks its 25th birthday, it starts again with two of the clubs which have contributed richly to its compelling narrative,’’ the SkySports commentator for the opening thriller between Arsenal and Leicester City thundered as he welcomed the world to another roller-coaster ride.

“lt’s Arsenal players treading the footsteps of those who won the title that season without losing a game, for the Leicester lads the ultimate fantasy of their championship-winning season is still fresh in the memory.

“Two of the golden thread to the Premier League tapestry entwined on opening night and for historians, whatever happened since and whatever happens next, this is the invincibles against the Incredibles.’’

The authoritative Bleacher Report this year ranked the English Premiership — powered by the most lucrative television deal in world football history that will generate a combined £10.4 billion to be shared among the clubs as the most popular league around the globe.

The biggest transfer fees, average goals per game in the league, highest value XI by market value and attendances are all factored in.

“Each league was scored from one to 10 in each area, with the highest or best in each area guaranteed a 10, the scores for each area are then totalled and divided, giving a final average score across the board for each league with which they can be ranked accordingly,’’ the Bleacher Reporter said.

“That leaves the Premier League in England as our top-rated, overall most exciting league to follow, on a score of 8.9.

“Incessant news coverage, the number of high-end clubs, big transfer fees and high attendances all rake in the big scores, while the Premier League matches La Liga for average goals per game with 2.9.

“Less impressive is its reputation for developing national youth talent, an area for improvement with most clubs in the league, but taking everything into account, the Premier League tops the bill for us.’’

And, as the globe celebrates the league’s 25th anniversary tomorrow, the part that Zimbabwean footballers have added to the show hasn’t been forgotten.

“Mention the ‘Dream Team’ in Zimbabwe and you shorthand the young Ndlovus up front, a rugged back four and one of football’s most charismatic goalkeepers,’’ journalist Ian Hawkey wrote in an article in British newspaper The Guardian.

“The Dream Team have an almost folkloric status, although they would fall just short of realising the aspirations they sustained over 15 months, of reaching a World Cup.

“Zimbabwe’s football had a sense that it too might draw on an unprecedented expertise from one of the sport’s most glamorous professional structures: the English League.

“From the vantage point of today’s Premier League, in which almost every team has at least one African in its line-up, it seems remarkable that in 1992, when the Premier League began, the two established African stars of the top-flight of English football were both Zimbabwean.

“Peter Ndlovu, quick, surprisingly sturdy in possession and a nimble opponent for many English centre-halves, had been spotted by Coventry City when they toured Zimbabwe as part of pre-season training.

“Bruce Grobbelaar’s route to the dominant English club of that era, Liverpool, from his beginnings at the same Highlanders club as Ndlovu later joined, had been more circuitous, via South Africa and Canada in the late 1970s.’’

And, on the eve of the Premiership turning 25, the contribution of another Zimbabwean football star is also being celebrated.

The incredible 11-goal feast at Fratton Park 10 years ago, in which former Warriors captain Benjani Mwaruwari struck a hat-trick for Portsmouth, has been selected by BBC Sport as one of the events that shaped 25 years of the English Premiership.

Pompey beat Reading 7-4 in a game that rained goals on September 29, 2007, with Benjani the star who illuminated the show with three goals for the home side.

Forty one percent of respondents to a Sky Sports poll for Portsmouth fans, to celebrate 25 years of the English Premiership, named that 11-goal thriller as their team’s greatest game in the top-flight league.

They ranked that game even higher than Pompey’s 2-1 win over Manchester City in 2006 and a 6-1 thrashing of Leeds in November 2003.

“There have been rugby games that finish with scores like this and yet this was a football match where, remarkably, the goal tally could have been higher still,’’ football writer Conrad Leach wrote in the Independent newspaper. “As it turned out, this was the highest-scoring game in Premier League history, beating the previous record of nine.

“The major factor in the mayhem, apart from two very accommodating defences, was Benjani Mwaruwari, who scored a hat-trick, his three goals ultimately separating the two teams. His was the afternoon’s outstanding single contribution.

“There were eight goals in the second half and there would have been one more had Reading’s Graeme Murty not missed a penalty. For a giddy half-hour, every shot on goal went in.

“It will go down as the game — until someone scores 12 — that people will remember, boast and lie where they were to claim some association with it.’’ Benjani was one of the nine different goalscorers that day.

The match dwarfed Liverpool’s 5-4 win over Norwich, Chelsea’s 7-2 win over Sunderland, Manchester City’s 3-3 draw with Arsenal, Manchester United’s 9-0 win over Ipswich, West Bromiwch Albion’s 5-5 draw against Manchester United, Arsenal’s 7-3 massacre of Newcastle, Tottenham’s 9-1 thrashing of Wigan and Spurs’ 6-4 win over Reading.