Story of the week
and Barcelona when, just before a 1943 second leg of the Copa del Rey (then known as the Generalissimo Cup), he visited the Barca dressing room to issue threats against the Catalan visitors who carried a 3-0 lead from the first leg.
As it turned out, Barca slumped to a humiliating 11-1 defeat at the hands of Madrid in that game and when stories started emerging of how the visiting players had been threatened by, of all people, the leader of the country, the seeds for an intense hatred of the team from the capital were planted in Catalonia.
And when Franco somehow then used his power to ensure Argentine superstar Alfredo di Stefano would not join Barcelona in 1952, as had been agreed, but would instead be signed by Madrid, providing the team with probably its finest player ever who proved inspirational in them winning the first five European Cup titles on the trot, the die was cast.
There is a feeling within a big constituency of Highlanders fans, whose team has the falling stripes — which
Boys when it comes to the championship race.
They read Memory Mucherahowa’s autobiography, “Soul Of Seven Million Dreams,” and hear him say that ZIFA president Philip Chiyangwa is a DeMbare man who used to bail out the Glamour Boys with thousands of dollars before he took over the leadership of domestic football and they conclude that, indeed, their rivals are the establishment club.
That ZIFA vice-president Omega Sibanda is a life-long member of Bosso, who once served on the club’s executive committee, doesn’t seem to matter at all in their web of conspiracy.
They also point to that largely cruel decision, to fixture Dynamos’ final league match against Black Rhinos a day after their main rivals Blackpool had completed their fixtures in 1995, giving the Glamour Boys the unfair advantage of knowing what they needed to ensure they could be champions — a mission they completed with ease — as another example of the establishment’s hidden hand.
Even though Chris Sibanda, who was the PSL secretary-general back then, eventually came out to concede his leadership messed up big time with that arrangement plucked from hell, and even issued a public apology for that monumental boob, it has done little to dilute the conspiracy theories and dismiss allegations the Glamour Boys are given a massive helping hand by authorities.
Accusations that the Glamour Boys have been favoured by referees, who were either fans of this giant club in their youths or are largely intimidated by both its reputation and the pressure exerted by the sheer number of the fans who come to watch them, have floated in the domestic Premiership for years.
Images of former Foreign Affairs Minister Water Mzembi in a Dynamos jersey in a public display of his romantic attachment to the Glamour Boys, the current Sports Minister Ray Kazembe coming from the DeMbare ranks where he used to be secretary-general and Mashonaland West Provincial Affairs Minister Webster Shamu being a long-serving Dynamos patron, have all helped feed into the conspiracy among some Bosso fans that their biggest rivals are a team backed by the establishment and that gives them an unfair advantage. That Father Zimbabwe, the late Vice-President of this country and one of our greatest founding fathers, Joshua Nkomo, was a card-carrying member of their team, as revealed by his family amid that explosion of fury when The Sunday News carried a story claiming he was a Dynamos fan, doesn’t even seem to matter to them in terms of weakening their argument.
That the former War Veterans Minister Tshinga Dube is a big benefactor of their club, also doesn’t appear to matter to them in terms of balancing their argument.
At least, President Mnangagwa has since revealed he supports his hometown team, FC Platinum, and Chelsea in England.
The accusations even filter to the media with most of the football writers being accused of being pro-Dynamos and Bosso fans have always wondered why is it that, whenever Dynamos win the league title, one of their players end up being the Soccer Star of the Year (Mucherahowa in ’94; Murewa in ’95; Murape in 2007; Arubi (2011); Denver (2012) and Muparati (2013).
And, they wonder, how and why it gets different when their team wins the league as was the case in ’93 when Agent Sawu was voted Soccer Star of the Year, 2001 when Maxwell Dube took the award and in 2006 when Clemence Matawu also took home this award?
They ask some tough questions like whether a player like Murape, for all his industry and leadership qualities, would have been a Soccer Star of the Year winner had he played for them and if a player like Muparati, for goodness sake, would have been handed such an honour if he had played for them?
And, in an era where very average footballers can be Soccer Stars of the Year, they ask why Johannes Ngodzo, Charles Chilufya, Thulani Ncube, Richard Choruma, Siza Khoza, Methembe Ndlovu and Honour Gombami didn’t win this award?
AND JUST LIKE BARCA/MADRID, DEMBARE AND BOSSO NEED EACH OTHER
Recently, as I explored this tricky subject of the Bosso and DeMbare rivalry, the two giants’ priceless value to our football, in general, and the domestic Premiership, in particular, and the resemblance of their case to that of the Barca and Madrid in Spain, I came across an authoritative book by Phil Ball, “Morbo: The Story Of Spanish Football,’’ and I found out that it made some interesting reading.
Because, for all their intense rivalry, including a pig head being hurled at Portuguese star Luis Figo on his return to the Camp Nou on November 23, 2002, after he had dumped Barca for Madrid, Ball argues that the two Spanish giants badly need each other and cannot survive, in their present shape, without the other.
“The relationship between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona is one of symbiotic antipathy,” writes Ball in his book. “They’re deadly enemies, but they feed off each other. If one of them went, the other would die.
“The whole Barça-Real Madrid rivalry reflects the cultural and political history of Spain in a very accurate fashion.
“People listen to the sports people at these clubs on the same level as the political leaders.
“If you’re twisting the microscope and get down to the core of those clubs, then they represent the two poles of Spanish society.’’
It’s just as if he was writing about DeMbare and Bosso.
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