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Home / Zimbabwe’s desperate protest not worth the candle
Zimbabwe’s desperate protest not worth the candle
2017-08-11Staff Report 2 The disturbingly intense ambition of Zimbabwe’s Football Association (ZIFA) to claw its way through the backdoor and into Africa’s second tier tourney, the CHAN Cup, is nothing but a case of sour grapes and can be aptly described as a trait of bad losers. Needless to point out, it’s by now a well-documented secret that our domestic football league has been idling throughout the entire 2016/2017 term. And for a country that is ranked way above us on the highly disputed FIFA World rankings to be eliminated by a team made up of a bunch of inactive amateurs was a massive blow, indeed a source of shame and irreparable embarrassment for the troubled Zimbos. Generally speaking, football matches are won on the field of play with the team scoring the most number of goals declared the winner. But the devil is in the detail here, let’s assume if Riaan Hanamub - whom the clearly confused Zimbabweans are mistakenly r4eferiing to as “Dynamo Fredericks” - missed the target from the contested spot kick - were our esteemed neighbours going to complain bitterly about the shoddy manner in which the penalty was taken? I’m just wondering. Sentiments and loyalties put aside, with all due respect, yours truly remains adamant the penalty should have been disallowed, as Hanamub feinted his run before dispatching the spot kick. The opposition was within their right to feel short-changed, but sadly referees’ decisions are final and cannot be reversed upon completion of the match. This is according to the rules and laws governing the beautiful game of football. Period. In what can be interpreted - and correctly so - as the last kick of a dying horse, the red-faced ZIFA officials still had the audacity to claim that some of the Brave Warriors playing personnel were improperly registered, nogal. My dear readers, do I need to remind you that Zimbabwe’s moaning is a display of an unpleasant flagrant disrespect and a self-entitled superiority complex towards their conquerors and of course, a total disregard for the rules of the beautiful game. My humble advice to the ostensibly aggrieved Zimbos is this: take it on the chin like men, given that you had 180-minutes at your disposal to fashion a better result – which you could not. So, man up and accept the outcome of the match. How many friends are you going to win by unashamedly persisting with your baseless protest if CAF were to nullify the result and order a replay? I’m just asking. Such a reversal would certainly be the first of its kind in global football, something I seriously doubt will ever happen. Zimbabwe’s action can be linked to result manipulation, obviously under the misplaced belief that it can easily bulldoze its way through standard procedures via the influence of ZIFA president Phillip Chiyangwa, who is also COSAFA president. Football matches are won solely on the field of play, certainly not in boardrooms nor via green table decisions – unless some blokes have made it their sole beat to make a mockery of the beautiful game. I rest my case. 2017-08-11Staff Report 2
