LIKE BALOTELLI AT OLD TRAFFORD SIX YEARS AGO, WE SHOULD ASK: ‘WHY ALWAYS US?’
NO one excreted as much venom as we did in the painful soul-searching exercise that followed our first experience of dealing with the intensity of the pain that comes with seeing a CHAN qualifying adventure being ended prematurely before reaching the finals of this tournament. “The Warriors were LIFELESS, HOPELESS, SPIRITLESS, TOOTHLESS, DIRECTIONLESS, RECKLESS, COLOURLESS, POWERLESS, VISIONLESS AND JOYLESS at the National Sports Stadium and, to a large extent, deserved their shock elimination from the 2018 CHAN qualifiers,’’ we thundered on this newspaper’s back page.

For nine years we had seen it happen to others — the Namibians in their backyard in 2008 and the South Africans at their home ground in the same year — with us being the ones who inflicted the knockout blow and began to feel this was something that would never happen to us and, boy oh boy, it was good.

Swaziland being beaten by our boys in their backyard in March 2010 and Seychelles suffering the same fate just two months later, Mauritius handed a 0-3 battering at home in July 2013 and the Zambians losing an international game at their Ndola fortress, for the first time since 1968, in a 0-1 loss to our boys in August that year.

Comoros being knocked out by our mean machine in July 2015 and Lesotho suffering the same fate, three months later, as our steam-rolling train crushed everything that came between it and a place at the CHAN finals.

All of them being floored by our troops, all of them falling by the wayside, all of them being forced to surrender, all of them being pummelled into submission, all of them being destroyed by our irresistible force while, from a distance, we enjoyed the spoils of victory.

And, to some extent, we turned into the spoilt kids who expected nothing less, when it comes to the CHAN tournament, whenever our troops went into battle, driven by history to believe that at the end of it all, we would be the ones celebrating.

One African journalist even wrote, with a lot of justification too, that the CHAN qualifiers in the Southern African Zone were football matches between Zimbabwe and others which, at the end of the contest, the Warriors always win.

From a distance, we had seen our opponents endure the pain and found a way to mock their downfall, feast on the spoils that come with success, scripted in offshore fields where the opponent believed home comforts would provide an advantage to them, and boy oh boy, it was good.

Exactly 30 years have passed since American songwriter and singer Julie Gold penned her classic Grammy-winning song “From A Distance”, unaware that the lyrics she was composing would become one of the finest musical compositions ever recorded.

And, from a distance, we had watched them endure their agony, with our beautiful world looking blue and green, the snow-capped mountains white, the ocean meeting the stream, the eagle taking to flight, the harmony which echoed through the land, itself the voice of hope, the voice of peace and the voice of every man.

From a distance, we had toasted our success, basking in the glow that we all had enough, that none of us was in need, that there were no guns, no bombs and no disease, no hungry mouths to feed, our Warriors were instruments marching in a common band, playing songs of hope, playing songs of peace, songs of every man.

God was watching us and from a distance, everyone looked like our victim and they couldn’t comprehend why we were the only ones who were anointed to win, why ours was the only land of harmony whose echoes vibrated through our football fields, providing the hope of hopes, the love of loves, the success of all successes.

And we never thought the sweet music would one day stop, telling ourselves that, like Wallace Hartley and his extraordinary band which kept playing on, amid the chaos on the Titanic that was sinking, the songs of victory would go on and on and on.

That is, until the Brave Warriors of Namibia arrived here two weeks ago and made us pay for the sins we had committed in our CHAN adventure, repeatedly inflicting harm on any opponent who crossed our path, with the football gods somehow choosing the most painful way to lose a football match — the penalty shootout lottery — to inflict that dosage of revenge.

A SUSPENSION OF DIABOLICAL REFEREES THAT CHEERED

OUR SPIRITS

While we were savage in our criticism of our Warriors’ poor performance that day at the giant stadium, when they could only power to a 1-0 win in a game they needed, at least, a two-goal winning margin to avoid the tricky penalty shoot-out, we highlighted that Swazi referee Thulani Sibandze had erred horribly to allow Namibia’s third effort in the lottery to stand.

We made it clear that the way Fredricks Dynamo converted that penalty, stopping at the end of his run-up and then feinting to confuse the goalkeeper before striking the ball, had long been outlawed in the game and that goal should not have stood, but noted as a missed effort.

We knew the rules had long changed, something that those who read our newspapers and expect us to provide them with expert guidance when such controversy erupts, deserve from us and we said, loud and clear, that goalkeeper Herbert Rusawo, captain Denis Dauda and assistant coach Lloyd Mutasa, were right to vigorously protest against the decision by the referee to let that effort stand.

Of course, in a domestic football family that has always been deeply divided to such an extent there are some who revel in the Warriors’ defeat just to further their agenda against a leadership they claim is ruining the game, our decision to highlight the failings of a rookie Swazi referee — who only handled his first international game in February this year — were mocked as being a package of apologies to try and divert attention from the team’s failures that day.

To them, we were not supposed to see any evil, hear any evil or speak any evil related to anything save for the Warriors’ shortcomings that day, which we had boldly highlighted by describing their show as lifeless, hopeless, visionless, reckless, powerless, toothless, visionless, you name it.

They even mocked us as being shameless sore losers when we sent a video of the controversial penalty to the International Football Associations Board, the ultimate authority when it comes to the rules and regulations governing world football, for them to provide us with expert analysis of whether that strike should have stood or not.

But, two weeks is a very long time in football.

On Thursday, news broke out that Sibandze, the referee whose diabolical decision not to disallow that controversial penalty by the Namibians had been suspended, together with his assistant Petros Mbingo — who supervised the lines during that shootout — by the CAF leadership pending an investigation into the mess they created in Harare that day.

The CAF leaders sent the suspension letter to the Swazi Football leaders and requested that the two match officials also provide them with more information related to that controversial incident related to that penalty kick which should not have been allowed to stand.

For us, after all the pounding we had taken from those who had accused us of being shameless crybabies who were choosing to deflect attention from the reality that the Warriors were poor that day, something which we had boldly mentioned, and clutching at straws by blaming our defeat to a penalty we claimed should not have stood, the news from CAF couldn’t have been sweeter.

Rules are rules and they have to be obeyed, that’s what football is all about, and that is why both teams have to field 11 players even when a giant like Barcelona are playing lightweight sides from Cyprus or the Faroe Islands in the Champions League and when the rules are broken, it must be highlighted and a price has to be paid.

The fact that our boys had played terribly was one thing, which we highlighted, but the fact that the opponents had been helped by a controversial goal that should not have been allowed was also another thing which needed to be highlighted and I am glad, even though we were alone on that mission, we plunged into the trenches.

Now, given the way CAF have acted and, by doing so, agreeing with our position that such a decisive moment in the game should not have been allowed to pass unnoticed by the match officials tasked specifically to ensure that rules and regulations are observed, we are having the last laugh as this drama starts to unfold at lightning speed.

Glad, as usual, that we have led the way and others can now join in the feast and glad that our actions had helped further the cause of our national team and even if, we don’t get the match being replayed at the end of it all, we will walk tall in the belief that we were right to fight against the injustice inflicted on our boys by those referees from hell.

Glad that those who inflicted the pain on us when they were supposed to protect us from being victims of gamesmanship that has long been outlawed from the game have now been sanctioned so that they know there is a price one must pay for such incompetence that borders on a deliberate attempt to ensure that the result favours a certain pattern.

Glad, of course, that those who had made it their mission to mock us as being misguided for, in their claims, chasing a wild goose in highlighting the failings of the referees instead of concentrating on the failings of our Warriors now know that we were not wrong, after all, and deserved a little bit of respect rather than ridicule.

The same people who probably don’t know that the same Zambian side that beat the Warriors at the 2016 CHAN finals in Rwanda and topped Group D needed penalties to beat Namibia in the final qualifier after the Brave Warriors had won the first leg 2-1 in Windhoek and then lost by the same margin in Ndola.

THE CASE FOR US AND WEB OF CONSPIRACY THAT IS STALKING US

When FIFA declared on September 6, 2006, that the result of the 2006 FIFA World Cup qualifier on September 3, 2005 between Uzbekistan and Bahrain was null and void and ordered a replay, the world football governing body set a huge precedent.

The decision followed a protest launched by the Uzbekistan Football Federation over a technical error by the referee of that match and said their decision was based on the following:

At the score of 1-0 in favour of Uzbekistan, in the 39th minute of the match, the referee decided to award a penalty kick to Uzbekistan.

The penalty kick was taken and led to goal in favour of Uzbekistan.

Before the penalty kick was carried out, an Uzbek player entered the penalty area and consequently, the referee awarded an indirect free kick to the Bahrain team.

However, in such a situation, the Laws of the Game require the referee to order the penalty kick to be retaken

The captain of Uzbekistan team protested to the referee immediately after the mistake had taken place and before the game had restarted. This protest was confirmed after the match.

This technical error was confirmed by the match commissioner and the referee inspector in their respective reports and Uzbekistan protested the decision of the referee in a written request, asking for the match to be “cancelled” and be evaluated with a 3-0 forfeit result.

The (FIFA) Bureau, taking into consideration that the referee in the match in question had INDEED COMMITTED A TECHNICAL ERROR, established that, as a consequence, the match needed to be replayed.”

Isn’t this a replica of our case against Namibia?

But, far more worryingly for us, must be the emergence of this raging army of referee who appear desperate to inflict pain on us by making a lot of questionable decisions against our national football teams.

Others have suggested the old guard in the CAF referees’ appointments — who probably owe their allegiance to the old regime of Issa Hayatou — have been using the match officials in a brutal fight against us for our football leader Philip Chiyangwa’s leading role in deposing the Cameroonian strongman from his position.

It’s hard to disagree with them because in Windhoek, in the first leg of the CHAN qualifier, the Warriors scored a perfect goal, but somehow, Malawian referee Dennis Nguluwe, disallowed it and we ended up losing 0-1.

The same Nguluwe who recently failed a fitness test in his homeland, who handled Bafana Bafana’s 4-0 thrashing of Thailand at the Mbombela Stadium in Nelspuit, one of the four 2010 World Cup warm-up matches played by the South Africans which were investigated by FIFA and ruled to have been manipulated.

The same Nguluwe who was suspended by the Football Association of Malawi on November 14 last year after a bizarre incident in a Carlsberg Cup final between top clubs Wanderers and Silver Strikers at the Kamuzu Stadium on September 10 last year.

“FIFA Referee Dennis Nguluwe was allocated to handle the Carlsberg Cup Final at the Kamuzu Stadium on 10th September, 2016,’’ the Football Association of Malawi said in a statement announcing his suspension on November 14 last year.

“He accepted and was fit for the match. It surprised everybody when after having started the match, he appeared to lose composure and claimed to fall sick. He asked to be substituted by the fourth Official.

“The Referees Assessor for the match, Mr Bester Kalombo, asked him to go to the hospital for check-up and treatment. He refused and said he can do the fourth official task. Whilst on the bench, he performed normally, no sign of sickness.

“Therefore he feigned sickness during the Carlsberg Cup Final match on 14th September, 2016 at the Kamuzu Stadium. To feign sickness for the match was for personal unknown reasons. This behaviour is not acceptable. This is betraying the trust that FAM had in him that he could handle the Cup Final.”

The same people who gave us a referee known to help TP Mazembe’s cause Bernard Camille — infamous for giving the Congolese giants those ghost penalties in Lubumbashi against Orlando Pirates in Lubumbashi — for the decisive second leg of the Champions League eliminator against CAPS United in Harare whose mission we foiled with that huge media outcry.

The same people who gave us Joshua Bondo for the key COSAFA group match against Madagascar this year where the Batswana referee somehow pretended not to see the two penalties which we should have been given leading to a huge outcry and his expulsion from the tournament after that match.

The same people who gave us that Burundi referee who somehow disallowed a clear goal by Mighty Warriors captain Felistas Muzongondi in their match against Egypt at the African Women Cup of Nations finals in Yaounde, Cameroon, last year.

The same people who gave us Thulani Sibandze.

To God Be The Glory

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

Khamaldinhoooooooooooooooo!

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