Del Bosque is a Spain in the ar**
YES we are not going to the 2014 World Cup!!! But we beat just beat the No 1 team in the world!!! Take that suckers!!! That’s what I tweeted with whisky-soaked fingers after watching Bafana Bafana visit pain on Spain on Tuesday night.
I stayed away from the stadium because this newspaper had a small matter of a Christmas party which apparently needed the compulsory attendance of yours truly’s gregarious self in all my pitch-black glory. Hence the whisky-soaked fingers, which explains “the we beat just beat” bit of the tweet. Alcohol, especially uncle Mninawa’s whisky, has an uncanny ability to bring out the fool in us.
Back to Bafana visiting pain on Spain. Very few of us, myself included, believed Bafana could win. We laughed ourselves silly when we read captain Itumeleng Khune say we’ll beat Spain.
Khune was probably on an SA Sports Star of the Year high when he made that stupid prediction, pronounced the white manager at my local petrol station.
Chad le Clos should have won, protested the manager. He then qualified his statement with the notion that the swimmer only lost to the soccer star because the former is white. Did you vote for Le Clos? I queried?
“No, but this thing is obvious,” he retorted, looking more serious than a heart attack.
One thing that is as obvious as a goat’s anus is that petrol fumes are known to be a mindaltering substance and inhaling the stuff all day clearly has an effect, I thought to myself as I waved goodbye to the manager.
Back to Bafana visiting pain on Spain. Forget the nonsense that the match could be relegated to a mere practice match because Spain, who had last lost a friendly in 2011, made seven substitutions instead of six. That should not be our problem. Fifa must fine Spain for flouting the rules. It is not South Africa’s problem that referee William Koto was star struck by the galaxy of stars in the Spain set-up. If the match commissioner didn’t tell the referee that the two teams had agreed on six substitutions in the pre-match meeting, the match commissioner must face the music. We all know that Safa has a catalogue of stupid shenanigans that is more colourful than a kaleidoscope.
You have the esteemed nincompoops who can’t read the rules of engagement for Afcon qualification. The silkysuited lot who allegedly work in cahoots with convicted match fixers seem a dime a dozen at Safa House. But this time the crazy Safa crowd can be excused of any chicanery. Especially because Spain coach Vicente del Bosque, even seconds after sauntering from his siesta, knows that when a team has made their regulation substitutions and their goalkeeper gets injured, they cannot make another substitution. One of the infield players must man the sticks, as Alvaro Arbeloa was correctly prepared to do.
Friendly match or not, rules are rules. Spain are not exempt from the rules.
Back to back European and world champion status does not exempt La Roja from the rules. Only musician Anita Baker believes rules are made to be broken. And that’s just a song. And a song is a song is a song.
“We had made the six changes and we asked the [Fifa] table if they would let us use [another] keeper. We appreciate the fair play of South Africa,” said Del Bosque. Since when do match officials collude with a coach to change the laws of the game while the match is in progress? Is that not match fixing lite? Can we then trust the selfsame Fifa to deal with our very serious match-fixing scandal? And Del Bosque calls it fair play? Try foul play, cynical one. Spain flouting rules is no different from people who don’t vote for their favourite sport star and turn around to make the issue black and white when they had their finger firmly in the butt during voting. Let me remind the petrol station manager there were no black-and-white issues when Chad won last year.