JOMO SONO EXPLODES AND CALLS PUNDITS A BUNCH OF ID**TS

REMARKABLY, in the event neither Dynamos nor Highlanders win the league championship this year, it will be the first time, since Independence, that more than three seasons would have passed on the domestic front without one of these two giants being crowned champions.

The first time in 38 football seasons, and the first time in 43 years, with the last time when this happened ending in the very year David Beckham, Robbie Fowler, Gary Neville, Hernan Crespo and the late Marc-Vivien Foe were born, in 1975.

Peter Ndlovu, who would go on to win the league championship with Highlanders while being a skinny schoolboy at the tender age of 17 in 1990, was a mere two-year-old toddler.

It never happened in the first two decades of Independence and the first time it occurred, after our Uhuru, was between 2003 and 2005 when AmaZulu and CAPS United combined to keep the two giants away from the podium of champions by winning three straight league titles.

It happened again three years later, between 2008 and 2010, when a host of domestic upstarts — Momomotapa, Gunners and Motor Action — combined to keep away the two giants from the special enclosure reserved for champions.

It is happening again right now given that in the last three years none of the two giants have managed to find a way to the arena of champions with Chicken Inn, CAPS United and FC Platinum being champions during that period.

It’s probably worth noting that this domestic football version of El Niño — if you are a Dynamos or Highlanders fan — also came with some kind of curse for most of the clubs that were part of this phenomenon as many of them soon went into extinction.

Arcadia United, champions in ’71, Salisbury Sables, champions in ’72, Metal Box, champions in ’73, Salisbury Sables, champions in ’74 and Chibuku Shumba, champions in ’75, collapsed at different intervals, and Mononotapa, Gunners and Motor Action also collapsed a few years after raising their flag of triumph on this special podium.

In the event that neither DeMbare nor Bosso win the league this year, it will be a fourth straight year this has happened and we have to go back to the beginning of the ‘70s to see a similar barren run by the two giants.

Somehow, even when one of them was having a tough time, the other would find a way to flex its muscles to win the championship regularly and provide a reminder to the challengers about who were the dominant bulls of this kraal.

Like Dynamos being crowned champions in ‘76, ‘78, ‘80, ‘81, ‘82, ‘83, ‘85, ‘86 and ‘89 when Highlanders were struggling in the shadows and Bosso being crowned champions in 1998/1999, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2006 when DeMbare were staggering in the darkness of mediocrity, they even went for a decade without being champions.

And when Bosso again went to sleep after winning the 2006 league championship, DeMbare found a way to come back to life and were crowned champions in 2007 and 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 as Callisto Pasuwa found a way to repeat the four-peat success story which the Glamour Boys had crafted just after Independence and Highlanders had matched at the turn of the millennium.

Love them or hate them, especially given these two giants have dismally failed to provide both the example or leadership needed for models of transformation from the bondage of amateurism to the freedom and commercial success of professionalism for domestic football clubs, what can’t be ignored is that they are special football institutions in this country.

When they are healthy, competitive and battling for honours, their vibrancy appears to feed life into the domestic Premiership, sparking interest among their armies of fans to come in huge numbers to our stadiums and providing the sights and sounds needed for a top-flight football league to thrive.

When they are struggling, attendances plummet, spectator interest in the domestic Premiership wanes, sponsor interest fizzles out and, for all the beauty and romance of the underdogs punching above their weight and being crowned champions, a dark cloud hovers over the domestic Premiership.

There is nothing, in our football, like the sights of a packed Barbourfields, rocking to the sounds from the Bosso faithful when their eternal rivals DeMbare roll into town, scenes so beautiful and the music — like Italian tenor Andreas Bocelli singing the spine-tingling Nessun Dorma at that Leicester City outdoor title party two years ago — such a powerful display of both romance and art.

It’s a pity, therefore, that this year marks a dozen years since Highlanders were crowned champions — the longest barren spell in search of a championship by this great football club since the formation of the Premiership and double the six years they couldn’t land the title between 1993 and 1999. undertones, with Barcelona fans crying foul that their biggest rivals’ path to greatness has, for years, been helped by their close links to the establishment in Spain.

Like during the years when General Franco ruled that country and he not only supported Real Madrid, which translated into English means Royal Madrid, and was a regular fan in the stands at their matches, but certainly despised Barcelona because the club appeared to represent the politics of Catalonia.

Franco, who ruled Spain for 40 years with an iron fist, is singled out as having planted the roots that would bloom into this fierce rivalry between Madrid I HAVE always been a big fan of Jomo Sono, who in my little book, is probably one of the finest footballers to emerge from this continent — as talented an individual as they will ever come and he didn’t only become an Orlando Pirates legend — but was even good enough to play with Pele at New York Cosmos. He was only eight when his father, Eric ‘’Scara’’ Sono, was killed in a car crash and his mother soon abandoned him, leaving him to be raised by his poor, very old and ailing grandparents. He used his football talent to become a superstar and in 2004, he was voted one of the Top 50 Great South Africans while he also received doctorates from the University of

A FIERCE RIVALRY THAT HAS A TOUCH OF THE MADRID/BARCA TUG-OF-WAR

Imagine a Spanish La Liga without El Classico — that grand duel which has replaced Manchester United/Liverpool battles to become the world football’s biggest club duel — and if you are a true disciple of this beautiful game, it’s something that sends shivers down the spine.

It’s an iconic rivalry, which has always been spiced by some political are also part of the identity of the Barcelona jerseys — as a part of their shirt identity protected in their constitution, that DeMbare, just like Madrid in Spain, are a club of the establishment and their rise to become the country’s most successful football team has to a large extent, been given a huge helping hand by the authorities.

They point to that ridiculous attempts to try and nullify the red card which had been issued on Dynamos striker Christian Epoupa Ntouba, ironically earned for violent conduct in a match against Bosso last year, as one of many examples of the establishment’s underhand efforts to try and help the cause of these

Glamour London and the University of Dubai for his contribution to football and business.

The 63-year-old never shies from saying what he believes and in the latest edition of Kick-Off Magazine, he shot from the hip when asked why he has kept on coaching his club Jomo Cosmos for the last 35 years even when some experts claim the team would be better off with someone in charge.