DeMbare too high for Bosso?

29 Jun, 2014 - 06:06 0 Views
DeMbare too high for Bosso? Innocent Mapuranga

The Sunday Mail

Innocent  Mapuranga

Innocent
Mapuranga

The failure to beat Dynamos over the past eight years appears to be stinging Highlanders into a spell of bewilderment.
It’s so bad it can quickly degenerate into lunacy if a reality check, from head to toe, is not conducted.
Highlanders appear to be dumping the football basics in favour of ridiculous beliefs, anchored in superstition, as they seek a change of fortunes.

The burning desire to end a barren spell at the hands of Dynamos has seen the Bosso family placing too much emphasis on getting the better of a team that, if the truth be told, is worth just six league points.

The league has 90 points to play for!
Slowly the need to beat Dynamos is becoming a dangerous obsession and each failed attempt triggers shocking indictments.
If it’s not the players who are deemed to be from the “wrong tribe or city”, it’s the referee and when there is not enough mud to throw at the referee attention turns to the coach.

When very little sticks on the gaffer all eyes turn to the supposed use of charms and other underworld nuggets by their opponents.
Defeat to your arch rivals ought to hurt. It must hurt much more than any other defeat, but that should not lead a team into losing sight of the bigger picture.

Beating Dynamos will not make Highlanders champions, this is football not boxing.
Highlanders can win the league after beating all the other teams expect Dynamos. The Bosso family must appreciate that the solution to ending DeMbare’s dominance is anchored in making football calls.

Superstition will not do the trick.
Fielding XI Bulawayo-born players will not either.

Firing coach Kelvin Kaindu without changing a culture, which saw the aging Felix Chindungwe being signed ahead of the versatile Walter Musanhu despite the coach indicating that he preferred the latter, will be a no-brainer.

For eight years Bosso have failed to beat DeMbare and that spell will continue if the team’s leadership allow themselves to be guided by superstition.

“Believe me a day is coming when this will end,” Kaindu said after watching another attempt at beating their old foes fall face first last weekend.

However, one can argue that the day Kaindu vowed will come will not come along anytime soon if Highlanders continue to believe that Dynamos are beating them in the spiritual realm rather than on the field of play.

Bosso, last Sunday, chose not to take to the pitch for warm-up as part of a comical belief that doing so would have seen them walking straight into DeMbare’s “juju trap.”

As it turned out Kaindu’s men did not pitch up either when the referee blew his whistle to start Zimbabwe’s biggest football battle at the National Sports Stadium.

Dynamos did not even have to break a sweat as Bosso put up an insipid performance that ought to have seen them receive a real hiding.
Thankfully for their faithful and ego yet to gel Dynamos appears to have no idea of how to put day light between themselves and obliging opponents.

The match ended 1-0 in Dynamos’ favour, thanks to Washington Pakamisa’s first league goal, but their coach Kallisto Pasuwa would be the first to admit that his team was not ruthless enough.

Perplexingly DeMbare chose to play for time when their opponents, thanks to a confidence-sapping goalkeeper who answers to the name Njabulo Nyoni and a leaky defence, were there for the taking.

In the end the score line suggested a close match but nothing could be further from the truth.
Highlanders will continue being beaten by their arch rivals if nothing is done about the way they suddenly become jittery and generous each time they square up against a Dynamos side that now seems to believe that they are an immovable object in their opponents’ eyes.

Bosso, clearly, are in need of a man who will take all the team’s weight upon his shoulders and take the game to Dynamos. At the NSS the team cried out for a leader.

No one stepped up.
Charles Sibanda put in a hard day’s shift but the striker is not yet a leader in a team that has such veterans as skipper Innocent Mapuranga, Eric Mudzingwa and the subdued Bruce Kangwa, among others.

The obsession to beat Dynamos appears to be burdening the Bosso players. No one wants to be the fall guy, everyone plays it safe.
No one is willing to take risks lest they will be on the receiving end of those nasty “you are a sellout” phone calls when the result doesn’t go Highlanders’ way.

Before the match Kaindu told his men to “go out there and play a normal game.”
However, when players are told not to step onto the pitch for warm-up because Richard Chihoro, the Dynamos team manager, is alleged to have worked some underworld magic, it ceases to be normal.

It becomes something bigger than football, something for the prophets!

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