Stepping into the future of football

IT HAS been a slow news week. Perhaps it was more conspicuous because the previous week was quite action packed. Of course, the highlight was the Warrior’s draw with Algeria. I actually left my home in the rain and joined some friends to watch at a rowdy sports club.

Either it was indeed a slow news week or it is because the Warrior’s are so significant that The Herald had a Sports news article on their front page on Wednesday. We can count the number of times a football story has been placed on front page as a lead banner.

All the same, I enjoyed watching a bunch of men watch other men chasing a small ball across a large field. The game itself was interesting, the hairstyles even more interesting, the names extremely interesting. It is of course, the world’s most popular sport with millions of dollars exchanging hands weekly around the sport.

There is a new crop of parents in Zimbabwe whose ‘get rich plan’ is to turn their gifted or ungifted sons into the next Benjani Mwaruwarui or Yaya Tourè. I get it, what with all obscene weekly wages which most do not get even in a year of going to the office everyday!

While I was based in Johannesburg, I had Jay Jay Okocha as a client for Public Relations. This involved spending time with him so I could be able to select suitable media platforms for his visit, key people to meet or not meet and manage the line of questioning from media. In fact it was more of ‘ babysitting’.

Through football, he basically could afford to pay people to think for him; from financial investments to who he is going to hang out with and which colour shirt to wear. I managed to get him to taste his first Crème Soda though! He was now accustomed to healthy eating although by then he was retired.

One thing I learnt from that brief encounter was that; it is important to have some balance in life. Basic skills like banking, basic education and good etiquette are important no matter what career you choose.

So dear aspiring rich footballer’s parents, let them do football but make sure they also have a fall back plan. I look forward to a new breed of African footballers who would have attended football academies, have polished etiquette and are educated.

We need a balance and not necessarily just have those scouted from dusty streets of West Africa (which is okay as it was the season). These young aspiring footballers also need a lot of mentoring.

The ones that pushed the envelope have learnt a lot of lessons and need to be passed on to avoid the newcomers from falling in the same pit.

This prompted me to research on the history of football. Foot- ball as we know it today originated in England more than 100 years ago. Today, that very game that started as boys ‘mucking around’ has birthed the English Premiership League, which is worth billions of pounds Stirling and is the most watched sports league in the world. It is broadcast in over 212 countries to over 643 million homes and an estimated audience of 4.7 billion people.

Fifa.com says of football, ‘. . . apart from the need to employ the legs and feet in tough tussles for the ball, often without any laws for protection, it was recognised right at the outset that the art of controlling the ball with the feet was not easy and, as such, required no small measure of skill.”

So please show some respect for the Warriors, they are paving way for future football stars for Zimbabwe and we should indeed make a big fuss over them.

Pupils to learn Mandarin, Swahili- Herald 18 Jan. 2017

In pursuit for international opportunities and has we prepare to be citizens of the global village, I am glad Government of Zimbabwe has acknowledged the need to train our children’s minds to have an international mindset; a world with no barriers.

It is of uttermost importance to have at least one international language, the top 3 being Mandarin, English and Spanish, although the French will never admit to this!

I would rather have Zimba- bwe schools teach2vernacular languages to all pupils; ChiShona and IsiNdebele than go into Swahili. But that is just my personal preferences. If we look at statistics and the real reason why Mandarin is a ‘must –have’ then we will see that it is the future.

Mandarin (commonly known as Chinese) is spoken by over a billion people around the world. This is a fifth of the global population.

In recent years, we have seen an influx of Zimbabwean students going off to China for tertiary education. These numbers will increase in the coming years. Whether you like China or not, we have to admit there are a lot of things they get right and it is powerful industrial economy which is growing every day.

Informally, there are good number of Zimbabweans visiting China daily for business ideas, purchase of equipment and a lot of other business transactions.

Everyone who has been to China will agree that language is a barrier. You often need to move around with a translator whom you have no choice but to trust. Imagine, if you could speak Mandarin on top of having your English? Apparently, Mandarin is not as difficult as it is perceived to be. It has no tenses, no cases, no gender and comes with simple grammar. Okay, that sounds strange if you are coming from an English background, but it is worth a try.

You know how even the Chinese who speak English usually switch to Mandarin when having a meeting with other nationals? If you are equipped with Mandarin yourself, you would not have to worry about side deals during a negotiation process. This could be interesting!

Zimbabweans vie for top AU posts – Herald 16 Jan. 2017

As I read this article which was more of a published CV, it highlighted the fact that there is no buy-in from the rest of Zimbabwe in supporting candidates from Zimbabwe for posts in international and regional organisations like the United Nations, Africa Union and similar entities. It is because, the important part is often not highlighted.

How do I, the reader and citizen of Zimbabwe come into this? How does this appointment benefit me in the short and long term? What can I do to contribute positively in the campaign? A win for one Zimbabwean is a win for us all. We have to admit, when it comes to supporting each other we have a lot to learn from our Nigerian brothers and sisters. Someone once said to me, it originates from the colonial era where ‘divide and rule’ was the order of day. Now that is another topic for another day.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this; why are we so reluctant to support each other? Email me at :norah@journalist.com

◆ Norah Spie is an author, journalist and communications consultant. She writes in her personal capacity and can be reached via Twitter : @norahspie