I’M NOT A PROPHET, MY BROTHER MAGAYA IS, BUT I KNOW THERE’S A RED LINE YOU CAN’T CROSS

SHARUKO TOPSHARUKO ON SATURDAY
EXACTLY a year ago, I described Sam Allardyce, as a “FOOLISH COACH CALLED BIG SAM” and it provoked a fierce backlash from people who felt the criticism was not only unacceptable, but was a vicious, if not sickening, blow below the belt.

I warned that Allardyce, just like pop superstar John Lennon who was gunned down by a deranged fan shortly after telling the world his super group, The Beatles, were more popular than Jesus, would pay dearly for the blasphemy in his autobiography called “Big Sam,” released last year.

I reminded Allardyce that, for years, the world had witnessed those who had mocked the Lord — after being fooled by their sudden success in either sport or music — falling on their sword in spectacular fashion.

Lennon told the London Evening Standard’s journalist Maureen Cleave in March 1966, he believed Christianity was in decline and his pop group — then the best band in the world whose music was rocking the globe —had become more popular than Jesus Christ.

“CHRISTIANITY WILL GO. IT WILL VANISH AND SHRINK. I NEEDN’T ARGUE ABOUT THAT, I’M RIGHT AND I’LL BE PROVED RIGHT,” Lennon thundered in that interview.

“WE’RE MORE POPULAR THAN JESUS NOW, I DON’T KNOW WHICH WILL GO FIRST — ROCK ‘N’ ROLL OR CHRISTIANITY. JESUS WAS ALRIGHT BUT HIS DISCIPLES WERE THICK AND ORDINARY. IT’S THEM TWISTING IT THAT RUINS IT FOR ME.”

I reminded Big Sam that Lennon was murdered on December 8, 1980 by Mark David Chapman, who had become a born-again Christian in 1970, and had been incensed by the musician’s remarks which he felt were blasphemous.

Why was I warning Big Sam you might wonder?

Well, he had brewed quite a shocker, in his autobiography called “BIG SAM,” in which, just like Lennon before him, he made some sickening remarks.

“It does rankle with me at times, the double standards you see in the Press. JESUS WALKS ON WATER AND THEY BUILD A RELIGION AROUND HIM,” Big Sam wrote in his book.

“I get Bolton into the top six with one of the smallest budgets in the Premiership and everybody calls me a long-ball manager. ANYWAY, IF JESUS IS SUCH A MIRACLE WORKER, HOW COME HE GOT CAUGHT? YOU’VE GOT TO WIN YOUR BATTLES.

“By the way, the walking-on-water thing is a myth. I’m not saying he didn’t do it, just that it’s easier than it looks. Any non-Newtonian fluid of a minimum viscosity can be subjected to a short period of shear stress if the body exerting the force is light enough — and people were a lot smaller in biblical times, that’s a known fact.

“We actually tried it on a warm-weather camp in La Manga once. We filled the pool with corn flour and Sammy Lee was able to run across without breaking the surface. We’ve got the Prozone printouts to prove it.”

Really!

I reminded Big Sam that even those who built The Titanic, boasted “not even God himself could sink this ship,” but we all know what happened on that maiden voyage to the United States, downed by an iceberg.

SHARUKO MIDDLE

And I told him about Tancredo Neves, a Brazilian Presidential candidate who said if he got 500 000 votes from his party, not even God would stop him becoming the country’s President.

Of course, he got the votes but, a day before his inauguration as Brazilian President, he was taken ill and died before taking his oath of office.

BIG SAM SACKED AS ENGLAND MANAGER, AFTER JUST 67 DAYS

When Big Sam was sacked as England manager on Tuesday, after his position became untenable having been caught up in a sting operation by the Daily Telegraph newspaper negotiating a £400 000 deal, to speak about football in the Far East with journalists-disguised-as-businessmen, and telling them it was easy to go around the FA rules on player transfers, it made front page and back page headlines around the world.

The English tabloids feasted on him, their voracious appetite for such sensational stories consuming Big Sam and savaging him for the greed that pushed the coach to negotiate for a £400 000 payment, with people he didn’t know when his fat pay cheque of £3 million a year was the highest that a national football team manager was earning the world.

In a game awash with money, and very low on morality and responsibility, Big Sam was this week cast as the ultimate Judas Iscariot and, given that his job demanded maintaining the highest standards of ethics, his comments, caught on camera, saying it was possible for agents to circumvent the FA rules on transfers and third-party ownership of players, were unacceptable.

And he simply had to go.

My Twitter account exploded as readers of this column went back memory lane to that article I penned on this blog, in October last year, warning Big Sam that his blasphemous attacks would bury him sooner than he expected and mocking the Lord, in such brazen fashion, was very foolish.

“In October last year, @Chakariboy wrote this article about Big Sam and, in almost a year, what he wrote has come to pass,” Handreck Matingwina posted on Twitter, attaching the article to accompany that post.

Inevitably, it provoked a number of responses with Daddy Farai tweeting, “@Chakariboy (it) serves him right, you can’t mock God and get away with it. ‘Look who is walking now?’” while Mufaro Masuka tweeted, “@Chakariboy you are a prophet. I was frantically looking for this article. I follow your Saturday column.”

And Adolphus Chinomwe posed a question: “@Chakariboy, prophet or genius?”

Of course, Adolphus, I’m not a prophet, my good brother Walter Magaya is the one who is a prophet, but one doesn’t need to be a prophet to realise there are some red lines that we simply can’t cross and one of them is that you can’t mock the Lord, the way Big Sam did, and get away with it.

Big Sam only lasted one game, and 67 days, as England coach, the shortest reign by a coach in the job he described as his “dream job.”

For some of us, who questioned his brazen blasphemy, there is a symbolism in the spectacular disintegration of his leadership of the Three Lions, the English national football team, in 67 days.

The numbers SIX and SEVEN have strong symbolism in the Bible and in life because, in case Big Sam didn’t know, Exodus 20:11 tells us that “For SIX days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them but He rested on the SEVENTH DAY. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it Holy.”

Exodus 34:21 tells us, “SIX days you shall labour but on the SEVENTH day you shall rest; even during the ploughing season and harvest, you must rest,” while job 5:19 tells us “from SIX calamities He will rescue you, in SEVEN no harm will touch you.”

Deuteronomy 15:12 tells us, “If any of your people — Hebrew men or women — sell themselves to you and serve you SIX years, in the SEVENTH year you must let them go free.”

Israel took over Jerusalem on June 7, 1967 (6/7/67) after the Israel Defence Forces paratroopers powered through the Old City and marched towards the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, bringing Jerusalem’s holiest site under Jewish control for the first time in 2000 years.

That takeover followed the 1967 Arab-Israeli SIX-day War and the fact that this war took SIX days, in ‘67, has always carried great significance in the religious world.

You see Big Sam, there is a red line you simply can’t cross, even if you are a coach who is charge of the England national football team and earns a staggering £3 million a year.

A PEOPLE WHO ARE QUICK TO CONDEMN THEIR HEROES

When news broke out on Monday evening that Knowledge Musona was one of a number of players being investigated by Belgian gambling authorities for placing bets on football matches in that country, our football community held its breath and, for a very good reason, too.

Admittedly, Musona should know that modern football, in an era where betting has become a multi-billion dollar industry with thousands of hawks waiting for an opportunity to compromise its integrity through the rigging of matches, has no place for professional footballers who place bets on the outcome of matches.

Even when they have no control on what happens in those games.

He should also know that gambling destroyed the careers of many professional footballers, who had better talents than him, including the mercurial English international Paul Merson who blew £80 000 of his pension on a gambling frenzy and whose cumulative losses to gambling ran in excess of £7 million.

Another Arsenal legend, Tony Adams, the irresistible Paul “Gazza” Gascoigne and the legendary Diego Maradona all suffered from serious gambling habits.

What I find irritating, though, is that, suddenly, some of us are quick to viciously attack Musona, including a group who even have had the audacity to suggest Musona was also placing bets on Warriors’ matches, which they can’t prove and which might not be true, amid a wave of innuendos in which they cast him as a serial cheat.

While his club, KV Oostende were quick to defend him, some of us are quick to condemn him with others even telling a local newspapers he wasn’t a footballer they trusted, reviving those unsubstantiated claims by the previous ZIFA leadership — a hopeless group of Stone Age administrators who always saw shadows — suggesting he was a rotten apple.

Musona needs help, and not rejection, because he has been the country’s leading footballer, for the past six years, and it’s a fact that no player has done more to the cause of the Warriors, since the immortal Peter Ndlovu, than the Smiling Assassin.

He has transformed himself into team’s talisman who takes responsibility when there are pressure situations, like taking a pressure-packed penalties, at the National Sports Stadium.

Khama Billiat might have emerged, in the past two years, as a driving force for the Warriors — destroying defences with his nimble feet and goals, including three that helped power us to the 2017 Nations Cup finals — but Musona remains the leader of the team in attack, the one who sets the tempo and his form, usually, is crucial to our success.

Such is his impact, in the team, that between 2010 and May 2014, Musona was the only Warrior who scored goals away from home in either the Nations Cup or World Cup qualifiers, scoring four times (one in Liberia, one in Cape Verde, one in Burundi and one in Egypt), with his goal-return, away from home in the 10 years between 2004 and 2014, better than King Peter (two goals) and Benjani, Malajila, Nengomasha, Nyandoro and Kawondera with one goal each.

Musona scored three goals, the same tally which Billiat grabbed, as they played leading roles in powering the Warriors to the 2017 Nations Cup, and given that he is a vital cog for the team, he generates a lot of interest among the fans who value his great contribution to the Warriors.

At least Musona, unlike Big Sam, hasn’t questioned the power of the Lord which suggests there is a window for his rehabilitation so that he focuses on a career that is blossoming and could even scale greater heights.

Poor Big Sam, gone in 67 days, and when he finds time he should read James 1 verses 6-7 (that SIX and SEVEN simply won’t go away): “But when you ask you must believe and not doubt because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.”

And, in case you doubt Big Sam, I refer you to Galatians 6:7 (that SIX and SEVEN simply won’t go away), “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man sow, that shall he also reap.”

Need I say more?

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

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

Khamaldinhoooooooooooooooooo!

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Chat with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber or read my material in The Southern Times or on www.sportszone.co.zw. The authoritative ZBC weekly television football magazine programme, Game Plan, is back on air and you can interact with me and the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika every Monday evening.

SHARUKO BOTTOM

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