Let’s hail the champions

By The Standard | Nov. 23, 2014

TODAY, the curtain comes down on what has been an exciting 2014 Castle Lager Premier Soccer League season.

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Events on the ground suggest that either ZPC Kariba or Dynamos will be crowned champions and at 16:45pm or somewhere around that time, we will know who the champions will be, although statistics seem to be pointing to a Kauya Katuruturu success.

ZPC Kariba’s home and away win over Dynamos, an away win over Highlanders and their 19- match unbeaten streak, demands that a tangible reward comes at the end of it all.

Champions are known for doing the job for themselves and it would be cruel for ZPC Kariba — who did themselves a favour by beating Dynamos, their biggest challengers home and away — to lose the league title on the strength of a loss to CAPS United.

Dynamos too have been known for doing the job for themselves, beating their own opponents, but this season their fans should admit that the Glamour Boys failed to impose their dominance.

I don’t think even the hardest of Dynamos supporters will celebrate for winning the championship this season because CAPS United would have done them a big favour after they themselves failed to beat ZPC Kariba.

The Dynamos scenario is like that of a man who fails to beat another man in the boxing ring and then believes his 18-year-old younger brother can do that for him.

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That should not be the case. A real man fights and wins his own battles, not to wait for another man to fight the wars for him. If DeMbare wanted to be the champions of Zimbabwe, then they should have beaten ZPC Kariba themselves, especially in the game they were comprehensively beaten 2-1 at the National Sports Stadium.

For Dynamos, the league title will not carry any weight should they win it on the basis of a CAPS United victory. It happened last season but for how long will Dynamos continue to place their destiny in the hands of a younger brother they have beaten themselves.

Whatever happens today, in all honesty, ZPC Kariba deserve to be crowned the champions of Zimbabwe.

As for the Glamour Boys, they now need a calculator to win it. May the best team of the season be crowned champions.

The CAF Champions League We hope that whoever takes the championship will be able to sustain a realistic challenge for the CAF Champions League come 2015.

The past four or five years have not showcased a good picture of the Zimbabwean game as the country’s teams have failed dismally in Africa, raising questions on whether the standard of our domestic football is going up or in the opposite direction.

The fact that Zimbabwean football is still ranked among the top leagues in Africa is not based on current performance but on history.

The last time a Zimbabwean club put up a strong challenge for the title was way back in 2008 when David Mandigora’s Dynamos reached the semifinals of the CAF Champions League, before falling out to Coton Sport FC of Cameroon.

Yes, Monomotapa came along the way and reached the mini league stage a year later, but they only managed a third place finish in their group.

Since then, Zimbabwean football fans have endured the frustration of watching their teams crash out either in the first or the second round.

Just like our national team which is going through a period of gradual decline, the same is happening to our club football to an extent that should that continue, our clubs will soon be ranked alongside the likes of Correctional Services of Lesotho and Botswana Defence Forces.

We used to have two slots in both the CAF Champions League and the CAF Confederation Cup but we now have one in each of the competitions while other countries with recent better performances have two.

We need to revive those good old days when foreign teams feared to face Zimbabwean clubs, unlike now when everyone wants to play us, including teams from Madagascar, Mauritius, Eritrea, and Seychelles.

This is how our football has fallen on the continental stage. Our champions have to stand up and prove a point.

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