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Sharuko on Saturday

SO, our report card finally came out this week and, as we all feared, it made miserable reading, with our Warriors plummeting down the FIFA world rankings.

We now find themselves pegged at number 118.

That’s five places down, from our previous ranking, of 113, during the month of September, as we continue to slip down the ladder.

We have new neighbours for company, trapped in the morass of mediocrity, and if we look to the left, we can see the Central African Republic.

Somehow, whether by design or default, their nickname, the Wild Beasts, also starts with the same initial, as ours (W), as if to underline the fact that, right now, we are in the same company.

They are considered one of the weakest national football teams on the continent and, predictably, they have never qualified for the AFCON finals.

For all the scariness of their nickname, as if it is meant to instill fear into their opponents, they have lost eight of their last 11 games, including a five-goal thrashing at the hands of Rwanda.

When you consider Rwanda are now ranked 133, in the world, it should bring home the Mickey Mouse nature of the neighbourhood, where we now find ourselves.

If we look to the right, we will also see Tajikistan, who last week marked the 10th anniversary of their heaviest loss, in international football, when they crashed 0-8 to Japan, in October 2011.

Amazingly, they are even ranked higher than us, at number 114, in the world.

Just two houses, from where we are, in this neighbourhood of featherweights, we find the Faroe Islands, whose original base is in the North Atlantic.

It’s a windy and wet archipelago, north west of Scotland, of rugged terrain whose islands provide a home to a population of just 53 358 people.

They are the fourth smallest UEFA member, by population, and did not play their first international game until August 24, 1988.

By then, we were veterans, in the trenches of international football and, that year, we honoured one of our greatest Warriors, future Dream Team captain Ephraim Chawanda, with the Soccer Star of the Year.

Known as The Rock of Gibraltar, he became the symbol of the Dream Team’s defiance, a natural leader, a fearless Warrior, back in the days when we fought like Vikings.

Somehow, just like other legends, Rocky can only watch from a distance, having been pushed out of a game he served with distinction, while those who have captured it, continue to drag it down the path to its eventual disintegration.

It’s very likely he will not even be recognised, if he were to pay a visit at 53 Livingstone Avenue, the home of ZIFA, let alone be accorded the VVIP treatment, which his mere presence, clearly deserves.

In a way, our game has forgotten about him, as it has done to countless other legends.

Good men, honourable men, great Warriors who, had they been given some room to contribute to our football, our national team wouldn’t be in the mess, where they find themselves, today.

Today, we find ourselves sharing a neighbourhood with the Faroe Islands, who are known, around the world, as the country with the biggest number of Nobel laureates per capita.

Ironically, just one of them, the late scientist Niels Ryberg Finsen, was accorded that honour, when he won the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology.

But, given their tiny population, his achievement meant that they have the most Nobel laureates per capita, in the world.

Their first competitive international match did not come, until September 12, 1990, when they beat Austria 1-0.

That’s also the year we first honoured the man who would, with the passage of time, transform himself into the greatest Warrior of all-time.

He was only 17, fresh from dominating the Copa Coca-Cola schools’ tournament the previous year, but it soon became very clear, without any shadow of doubt, we were witnessing greatness.

Peter Ndlovu, what a footballer, what a Warrior, what a patriot, what a man, the genius who dragged us on a journey laced with both fantasy, and reality, back in the days when we hunted like real warriors.

From the streets of Makokoba, he used his God-given talent to live his dream, as the first African footballer to feature in the English Premiership, an honour they will remember, long after he has retreated to his grave.

Neither will time also erase the reality that he became the first African footballer to score a hattrick, against mighty Liverpool, on the hallowed turf of Anfield.

In inspiring Coventry City to a stunning victory, in March 1995, the Flying Elephant also became the first visiting player to accomplish such a feat, in 34 years.

Two months earlier, Vitalis Takawira, a footballer with such sublime dribbling skills fans even claimed he operated like a digital clock, had scored a stunning hat-trick, on home soil.

It’s the opposition, the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon, the flag bearers of African football in the world, around that time, which made the Digital’s hat-trick such a special feat.

Those were the days of our lives.

WE ARE NOW BEING FOUND ON FIFA’S THIRD PAGE

A month after Takawira scored that hat-trick, the Warriors soared to number 41, on the world rankings, the best position on the globe, which we have ever occupied.

We were found on the first page, where FIFA rank their top 50 nations in the game.

Now, we are found on the third page, where FIFA rank the nations who occupy positions between number 101 and number 150.

On this page you find the likes of Kazakhstan (125); Turkmenistan (131); Antigua and Barbuda (128); Suriname (139); St Kitts and Nevis (146), Solomon Islands (140); Myanmar (145) and Hong Kong (149).

You also find Ethiopia (137), a country who still were good enough to beat us, in a 2022 World Cup qualifier, in their backyard.

And, this is where you find Botswana (149), the only country which Zdravko Logarusic was able to beat, during his miserable time, in charge of our boys.

It’s where you also find Sudan (123), the only other national team which Loga has coached, where he was said to have, somehow, impressed those who lead our football, culminating in the deal to bring him here.

Three years ago, in October 2018, amid the fierce boardroom battles which were exploding everywhere, for the control of our football, we were ranked 110th in the world.

Now, we are 118th and what this means is that while the faces of those who are running our national game have changed, we are still trapped in the neighbourhood of the lightweights.

A sorry place where the pass, to enter the estate, which houses these poor football teams, is confirmation that mediocrity is part of the DNA of the game’s management.

We have now been pushed behind the pecking order, having fallen into 118th place, with very little to suggest that this slide, into the abyss, will be stopped, anytime soon.

Inevitably, questions now have to be asked:

• If we can’t improve the Warriors, to play as well as we know they can, given all the support they require, what is the need to have elections, to change the ZIFA bosses?
• Alternatively, if those who come in, promising heaven and earth, cannot improve the very team, which represents all of us, which brings all of us together, what is their justification, to continue hanging on to their posts?
• If the Warriors cannot win at home, for two years, as has been the case during this poor run, surely, is it not the kind of calamity, which demonstrates either the absence, or the need for a change, of leadership?
• If the Warriors’ only win at home, in two years, has to come against Lesotho, a 3-1 victory in a CHAN qualifier, in September 2019, what message are we getting from such a poor sequence of results?
• If the very Lesotho, which provided the Warriors with their only victory at home in the last two years, are also found on page three, of the latest FIFA rankings, at number 145, what message are we getting from all this?
• If our boys can turn on a man-of-the-match show, in the English League One, and an excellent performance, in the English Championship, in the same week they left home, after a depressing defeat in our backyard, what does this say about the conditions, in which we force these guys to play?
• Especially, against a background where, in their most important World Cup qualifier in the history of their international careers, we made them arrive home, just about 24 hours, just before the big match?
• Especially when the opposition win the psychological warfare, in showing us how such big matches are prepared for, by arriving in our country, about 16 hours before us and holding a training session, in our backyard, while our boys are just taking off from Addis Ababa.
• What do we really expect to get from our boys when we take them from an environment, where everything is professional at the clubs where they play for, to come home to find themselves surrounded by a sea of amateurism?
• Bafana Bafana right now don’t have a player like Jordan Zemura in their ranks, it’s just the plain truth, but they have found a way to make sure the sum of their parts, in their team, can take them to a higher level, than us.

It’s called professionalism, as simple as all that, and it comes from hiring the right coach, not a clown like Loga, creating the right environment and making sure every arm of the association plays its part, in delivering the national team to a new level.

That’s why the South Africans find themselves top of our group, and with a golden chance of qualifying for the World Cup, after putting into practice everything they learnt in their doomed 2021 AFCON qualifying campaign.

Results don’t lie and right now, being a Warriors fan, is really a tough test of our patience, a rough test of our emotions, a severe test of our patriotism.

And, it’s not that our boys are bad but we have created conditions where they cannot express their talents, where they cannot play to the best of their abilities, where they go back to their bases wondering what the hell we are doing.

EVEN POOR SOMALIA NOW HAVE A VICTORY OVER US

When we look at the company, which now surrounds us, on the latest FIFA rankings, we will see New Zealand, known more for their rugby prowess than football.

Then, there is Tajikistan, who played their first international match, against Uzbekistan, on June 17, 1992 and were not even a FIFA member, until 1995, when Takawira scored that hat-trick against Cameroon.

And, when Peter Ndlovu scored that historic hat-trick, against Liverpool, at Anfield.

We will also see Kosovo, a country of just 1.8 million, which only declared its independence in February 2008 and, just five years ago, crashed to a 0-6 defeat, at the hands of Croatia.

Maybe, that’s where we now belong and please don’t blame our players because the reality is that we have decent material to be ranked in the top 100.

In an obscure way, maybe, in this 2022 World Cup qualifiers, fate wanted to provide us with a chilling reminder of how we have left our national game to rot, to such an extent we now belong in the neighbourhood where the world’s weakest teams are found.

This whole journey, it appears, has been about the football gods taking us to a place, and time, where those of our featherweight class reside.

After all, it started on the very edges of the eastern coast of the continent, where football, for all its power and romance, remains on the periphery of society, just another game, played by eleven men aside.

Somehow, the adventure began in Djibouti, of all countries, where we found ourselves taking on homeless Somalia, in a preliminary round match.

First, let’s deal with Djibouti, the country which had won only one of 13 previous qualifiers, when they forced a shock 0-0 away draw with eSwatini, in the preliminary round, of the same World Cup qualifiers.

The same Djibouti which, in the preliminary round of the 2018 World Cup qualifiers, had crashed to a humiliating 1-8 aggregate loss, at the hands of eSwatini.

They are known as the ‘’Shoremen of the Red Sea,’’ and their history shows a number of terrible results, including conceding nine goals in the DRC, and eight goals, in Malawi.

Even the French coach, Julien Mette, they had hired for the 2022 World Cup qualifiers, put everything into perspective, in a candid expression of their objectives.

 “The official did not speak to me about qualifying for the Africa Cup of Nations, the African Nations Championship or the World Cup,” Mette told the FIFA website.

“All he wanted was to stop losing 5-0 and 6-0 and I said I would definitely bring him that dignity.’’

Today, Mette is jobless after Djibouti lost 0-8 to Algeria, 2-4 to Niger, 0-4 to Burkina Faso and 0-2 to Burkina Faso, in their first four group matches.

These are not surprising results because, until their 1-0 win over Somalia, in the first round of the 2010 World Cup qualifiers, Djibouti had never won a FIFA-sanctioned international match.

This week, the Burundi Football Association boss, Souleiman Waberi, was forced to address a media conference, which at times was painful to watch, as he tried to explain why their team fell short again.

But, at least, he was brave enough to do it, because that’s what leadership is all about, to confront the nation, which invested all its trust in you, and answer the tough questions.

It’s not only about appearing on television, when things are going well, but about taking responsibility, when things haven’t gone according to plan.

It didn’t matter that the authorities in Djibouti have opened investigations into him, and the football federation he leads, leading to the country’s entire football leadership being barred from leaving the country.

Waberi is the third vice-president of the Confederation of African Football, making him the fourth most powerful man, in football, on the continent.

It was in his country’s capital, Djibouti City, on the shores of the Red Sea, where we started our disastrous 2022 World Cup campaign, in a trip that was, in a way, prophetic, about our journey into football’s darkness.

We lost that game 0-1 to Somalia, of all teams, who had last won a game 10 years earlier, last played at home 33 years earlier and were ranked as Africa’s weakest football country.

They had only scored once, in 17 matches, since the turn of the millennium, until they made it two goals, with the goal that beat us.

Their hero was a driving instructor, who spends his time teaching driving lessons  in Manchester, England.

If we needed any reminder, that we now belonged to this club of mediocre and lightweight national football teams, it was that result, which provided confirmation.

To God Be The Glory!

Peace to the GEPA Chief, the Big Fish, George Norton, Daily Service, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and all the Chakariboys in the struggle.

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

Ronaldoooooooooooooooooo!

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