I make a beeline for Sahwira Café in Mufakose, when electricity is out at home. It is always nice to go and mingle with friends before the match starts and get to hear what our domestic premiership players have been up to — on and off the field. Never mind being pestered for a beer by some people who claim to know me, it is always a joy being at a sports bar.
Chelsea striker Fernando Torres is the butt of most jokes at watering holes, particularly at Sahwira. I have since discovered that we live in an age where it seems there is more pleasure derived from another man’s misfortune than one’s team achievements. The English call it the X-factor mentality. Or schadenfreude!
It’s when an audience derives its pleasure more from failure than achievement. I am tempted to borrow a joke from Sahwira pub to say the Torres syndrome has hit the Castle Lager premiership. Not that I derive pleasure from other people’s failures, but that is how the script is panning out.
With eight matches to go before the curtain comes down on the premiership, the race for the Golden Boot does not look golden. It looks like the premiership will degenerate into another Torres show, minus the big bucks involved in his transfer from the Kop.
But unlike any other time in the history of the local league, some greenbacks have been poured into the premiership courtesy of Castle Lager. The domestic league has never been this rich but we are short on quality.
Then we have some moneybag sides like FC Platinum coming to the party. The short of it is that our players are getting better remuneration than in the last four years, but the goals have not been coming. With the eight games before the season ends our top goalscorer gunning for the not-so-Golden Boot is Charles Sibanda sitting on nine goals.
Simba Sithole on 10 goals is out of the equation since he has found home at Super Diski’s Mamelodi Sundowns. The other players gunning for the top goal-scorer award are Dynamos Rodrick Mutuma (8), Pride Tafirenyika, Leonard Fiyado and Makai Kawashu with seven goals each.
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By Fanuel Viriri
It’s hard to imagine with the players’ goal scoring exploits if any of them have the capacity to score an average of two goals per match. It’s almost next to impossible.
It will be a fantasy to think that Charles Sibanda can beat Norman Maroto’s 21 goals in the 2010 season let alone Nyasha Mushekwi’s 22 goals in 2009. Sibanda will certainly not beat Evans Chikwaikwai’s 23-goal haul in 2008.
But maybe Sibanda can beat Ralph Matema and Master Masitara who shared the Golden Boot award in 2006 after scoring 11-goals apiece.
Please do not get me wrong, I am not finding pleasure in our players’ under achievement, but we need to do something about this rot. Our players have lost that hunger for success. The league has been professionally run this season and the players should give us value for money.
WHY THE POOR SCORES THIS SEASON
Low scoring rates mean our players are not good enough or the defenders have been good this season. But I would like to stick my head and say the domestic premiership does not have deadly strikers and are just a bunch of occasional goal scorers. I wonder if it’s the coaching methods or if maybe it’s in our genes not to produce good strikers.
