Yours truly is almost certain many of you will scorn to own me in a lie if I boldly state that the day I stop writing about sports and football in particular, a lot of people will start reading newspapers from the front page and fall asleep before getting to the pages where life is ordered, the sports pages!
The definition of when evil strikes harder than good is about people wanting to convince others about something focusing only on the advantages instead of highlighting how they will help them dodge the disadvantages. The fear of losing something motivates people more than the prospect of gaining something of equal value.
Let me doff my korrie for the Namibia Football Association (NFA) and its partners for coming up with the newly introduced Dr Hage Geingob Soccer Cup that pits recently crowned South African champions Mamelodi Sundowns FC against a yet to be chosen opponent from our neck of the woods.
When football people get to take football related decisions, there seems to be an element of complacency ignoring basic issues that could come back to haunt them in the final analyses. The methodology to be applied in the selection of suitable opponents for Sundowns is a cause for concern in terms of transparency, let alone accountability.
As much as we advocate democracy, fairness and all that jazz, this outdated method of giving football followers a carte blanche to randomly vote via SMS for the team of their preferred choice is suicidal and could have serious repercussions with regard to marketing purposes.
Flamboyant club bosses or anyone else with deep pockets can manipulate the voting process by availing large portions of moolah to give their favourite teams the nod.
Let us call a spade a spade – football fans will certainly feel short-changed and rightly so if they are to watch a mid-table team or any other club outside the traditional Katutura big four from the MTC Premiership compete against one of the most successful football teams on the African continent for such an august event in honour of our Prime Minister.
The likelihood of any average team from the NPL garnering the most number of votes cannot be ruled out or is it perhaps another well-calculated strategy to rake in thousands of dollars from unsuspecting customers through sms’s, while the real McCoy has already been identified. I’m just asking because yours truly remains unconvinced in the conspicuous absence of a justified transparent method in the voting process.
Slice’s arrival a welcome omen
This week’s appointment of former Brave Warriors defender Mohammed Ouseb by the Namibia Football Association (NFA) is a move in the right direction. Surely, the NFA deserves a pat on the back for its bold decision to rope in former players into its previously somewhat fragile coaching department.
Bra Slice is arguably the most complete footballer in domestic football in post-independent Namibia as can be attested by his spotless repertoire with South African glamour football club Kaizer Chiefs, where he was deservedly voted best player of the season by Kickoff magazine in his first season with the Phefeni outfit.
Yours truly would like to sincerely plead with the skeptics to give the coaches some breathing space to go about their work uninterrupted. As it stands, the team is a work in progress meaning the two coaches will need time to get the players accustomed to their playing philosophy and training methods. I rest my case.