The Sunday Mail
The Warriors have little option but to do business as they face Tanzania in a 2015 African Cup of Nations preliminary round, first leg qualifier in Dar es Salaam this afternoon.
It looks like a shoe in for our boys from whichever angle one seeks to view this match.
This a tie Tanzania cannot win, it’s just one the Warriors cannot lose.
Shall we go over that again?
Tanzania cannot beat the Warriors.
However, the Warriors can lose (read give) the game to Tanzania.
Granted, there are no longer small teams in African football, but if the truth be told, there are some teams which the Warriors are supposed to beat even in their sleep.
Tanzania are one of those teams!
Indeed it’s not too much for the nation to ask the Warriors to dispatch the Taifa Stars.
In football terms there should be something close to day light between us and them.
Even the Fifa rankings, never mind the controversy they torch once in a while, tell a story of a Zimbabwe that is far much better than their hosts.
The Warriors are the 98th best football team in the world and 26th on the continent while the Taifa Stars are a 122nd and 37th respectively.
There is always the feel-good talk about football being round, it can roll either way, and its beauty being in the ability of the underdog to occasionally cause an upset.
However, the best football teams are known to be ruthless.
They take their opponents to the cleaners whether it’s in Harare, Dar es Salaam or Djibouti.
And to us the Warriors are the best team in the world, the only team we have, the only team we can identify with. So as the boys get ready to embark on a mission, that should see them dim the Taifa Stars, Zimbabwe is expectant.
One cannot possibly imagine a Warriors defeat given events in the build-up to the tie.
For once the national team camp was not a haven of boobs, food shortages, player boycotts and verbal wars.
It was all about football to such an extent that the fact that Gorowa has decided to sideline one of his assistant coaches, Mkhupali Masuku, because of his inactivity on the domestic scene, never made the headlines.
Zifa president Cuthbert Dube is said to have given the team a beast and some grain from his farm.
That, too, never made the news.
Now with Zifa having, shockingly, played their part, Ian “Dibango” Gorowa and his men ought to play theirs.
The absence of Kingstone Nkhata and Willard Katsande, for reasons they only can best explain, will always be a point of conjecture.
However, the pair’s absence is not worth the fuss, discussing it is a no-brainer ahead of a match whose run in was, quite refreshingly, all about football.
Go Warriors Go!
