While you were out, football called

AFEW days ago, I came across an old message pad. Of course, some people might not readily know what this is. Well, a message pad was a piece of stationery that was filled in by an assistant, aide or administrator to give notifications and messages of calls that would have been made while the owner of the office was not around.

They generally had a header that read: “While you were out (space) called.”

There was also space for the date and time of the call, as well as the message.

As you might have correctly surmised, this was before the advent of the cellphone, which now allows people to receive calls and messages from wherever they might be.

Zimbabwe recently returned to the international football family after the lifting of a ban imposed by FIFA on February 2022.

I imagined what it would be like if Zimbabwe football was a business leader who walked back into their office after being away for one-and-a-half years.

They would have found a stack of “While you were out” messages.

Here is how a few of them would have read:

Message 1: While you were out, Barbourfields Stadium called — Dynamos and CAPS United are now using our famous turf as their home ground. This is quite unprecedented. The fans here have been coming out in numbers and the revenue has been good. However, we have recently seen the return of a familiar foe: crowd trouble. One upon a time, in your older days, you dished out some novel sanctions. Text me and let us see what we can come up with this time.

(At the time of writing, the two Harare teams had moved back to the National Sports Stadium). Message 2: While you were out, the Spanish Football Association called — Sexual harassment of female players is no longer acceptable. Our national federation president celebrated the women’s national team World Cup win by kissing a player on the lips.

The player raised a complaint. The president said he would not resign because he did nothing wrong. He has now resigned and is in court on charges related to his behaviour.

Message 3: While you were out, Saudi Arabia called — We are now the centre of the football world. We have turned football transfers upside down and attracted some of the biggest names you knew.

Some say this will be short-lived. Others believe we are the real deal. Any way you look at it, we have changed the way the world talks about Saudi football forever.

Your former national team captain is here with us and he is bringing some exciting knowledge to our game. Come through when you have a chance. We can have a sobia and see where you want to take your game.

Message 4: While you were out, cricket called — We are taking over your perch as the top sport in the country, according to the fans.

We are filling grounds and even turning fans away because there is no space left. We are singing songs that are catching the imagination of the world.

We have generated countless memes of the pure joy our fans bring to the stadium. On a more serious note, though, we need to talk.

We seem to have picked up your habit of forcing our fans to look for calculators in the latter parts of the group stages, and then leaving them full of sweet memories but knocked out. It is a bit like your famed Dream Team. Come by our corner named after a famous intoxicating beverage and we can talk calculators. Mine is a Casio.

We could go on all day.

The key is to celebrate the return of football and help build systems that will prevent going back to footballing exile.

The national team players felt it.

The fans are still smarting from it. The business side of the game suffered because it lost revenues and opportunities.

While you were away, football fans called, repeatedly — We missed you! Now don’t do it again.