2014 Soccer Star Awards A Disgrace I would like to express my personal opinion on the state of our football in reference to the sad story of national football awards 2014. As much as it is shocking, i am deeply worried with the future of our football. All along we have been crying of gross incompetency as far the general level of administration is concerned. Now its has gone to the real custodians of the game, sports journos. It is reporters who makes football exciting. they create the hype. They spice up the game by making thorough analysis of the game for the ordinary man on the street. But from events of the past week , it has proved that we have wrong people , infact we have supporters mas-quarading as sports reporters who enjoy the privilege of watching free football at the expense of branding our football. Sports reporters are suppose to spend time analyzing the game of football from training grounds, gym , up to the playing field. reporters are suppose to inform us about players and the technical team , statistics as well as player profiling. All fans needs is player and team news. But the generation of todays reporters is concentrating on wrong stories. They now compete to be friends with the football back office. yes its back office , the main office is that of the technical team and players. But todays reporters are concentrating with the team executives. This is sad and wrong for our football . Journalists are always roaming around with club executives. Roving from one office to another. Their business now is more to advance executives agendas at the expense of football. we are tired of football administrators commenting on technical issues week in, week out at the expense of technical staff. In normal circumstances with all professional football setup, executives remain in the background and we can only hear about them when announcing about administration functions only . This is now very different with Zimbabwean football. Executives are taking limelight ahead of real stakeholders , players and coaches. Executives are now commenting about team strategies, players form and availability, this is aweful. Today you hear Ken mubaiwa this mubaiwa that , Chikengezha this n that , and sadly i read about Gumede talking about his team strategy of using new and youthful players for the final with Dynamos. This is bad as much it is very sad story for our football. Since when do we have executive being coaches.? . Sports journos have now endorsed executives on technical issues thereby shortchanging their prime and important responsibilities of formulating team business strategies . Executives must remain in back office of football and the front office is for the technical staff period. Journos need to understand this. We dont need business with back office at all. Why has journos became friends to executives. Do not pervert justice or show partiality . Do not accept a bribe , for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the innocent Dt 16:19 Events of our football testify this scripture in full. You read stories by journos advancing interests of their paymasters. We read stories of executives exercising authority and denouncing their technical staff. Now lets look at the aweful 2014 football awards. ZPC competed with 15 other PSL teams including Dynamos in the 30 match marathon league. This is the summary statistics for the top four teams Games W D L GF GA Points Dynamos 30 16 9 5 34 18 57 ZPC 30 15 11 4 42 25 56 CAPS 30 15 8 7 38 27 53 FC Platinum 30 13 12 5 34 19 51 From the above final table , it is very clear that this was a close contest for the four top teams and no team dominated the league . Dynamos came out victorious and reigned supreme by eventually winning the league period. All other three teams will only be remembered for giving Dynamos a strong competition throughout the marathon only. In addition to that , Dynamos won three other trophies on the trot whilst FC Platinum grabbed one . Nothing for ZPC or CAPS . Please note, some few ignorant persons might argue that Dynamos won those trophies in competitions which only four top teams participated. By rules and standards of the said competitions Dynamos qualified to participate and they did not participate alone, they beat other teams to glory. Moreso , FC Platinum won the premier knockout Chibuku tournament which both CAPS and ZPC participated. My point is from the top four teams only Dynamos and FC Platinum won silverware in 2014 season, Pasuwa coached Dynamos 4, FC Platinum 1 , CAPS 0 & Chaminuka coached ZPC 0. Furthermore, Pasuwa coached Dynamos played more games than any other team in the league but still came out winners . Dynamos played either 4 or 6 champions league matches plus 4-6 matches in those mini competitions. This puts Dynamos between 8 - 12 matches extra ahead of ZPC Kariba. Inspite of all these odds favoring ZPC Kariba , history ,facts and statistics points to one thing, they FAILED to win the marathon league period. Being second best will never guarantee anyone gold. My question is ,how then does ZPC Kariba be the team that dominated the 2014 league when they won absolute nothing in the field of play. Gauging with highlights from the awards ceremony , ZPC were playing in a league of their own where they bulldozed everyone to glory. Even When Barcelona was crowned Team of the year , they won everything on the domestic league to europe but never scoop all individual awards . It was always Messi here, Ronaldo there. But how come a team that won nothing get all awards. These awards are not from the field of play , but by choice? . What then was the barometer used by journos . When i go back to 2014 stats, FC Platinum did better than ZPC, they won silverware as well as played in two finals. They also competed in the marathon league until the final stage. Only 1 game and 2 points separates FC Platinum with ZPC. With these factual stats , nothing seem to suggest ZPC supremacy over eventual winners Dynamos. Yes they collected 6 important points off Dynamos but the league is comprised of other 14 teams which they needed to get good results. Dynamos does not constitute the league, its Dynamos and 15 others. Beating Dynamos does not make one team a champion. Looking at those individual awards , ZPC was awarded with all three top awards , the king (soccer star of the year) , first runner up and second runner up. I am sure if we had 2 more awards down the line , ZPC could have been awarded too . Now my question is/ If ZPC produced the best 3 players in the league to be the best team , how can a coach with such a supreme cream of stars fail to win the league but still he is awarded the coach of the year accolade. I smell either conspiracy or gross incompetency. Even if we look at the goalkeeper award that went to ZPC ,we got more questions than answers. ZPC conceded 25 goals , FC Platinum 19 whilst Dynamos 18 but still the award for that best defense went ZPC way. Can someone tell me I am dreaming. Ladies and gentleman these are facts ,for the best of our football , we need an inquiry on the conduct of these awards. Can near misses won you an award.? This is not making any sense at all . We need to know the scope and merits these journos use in recognizing best performing athletes. From the 2014 awards ceremony , it simply means you don not have to win a any competition for you to be awarded . You can still be a looser and walk away with a glamorous award . It now defeats the scope of competing. Ask Chaminuka will tell you the trick. In all fairness Chaminuka is a good coach as much is Mangwiro but the truth is , he was not good enough to win any silverware throughout 2014 season. Pasuwa did just that. He won in four competitions and considering the pressure he had to endure throughout the season. The pressure of defending the league for the third time on the trot is not a joke ,moreso by breaking his on record he set the previous season of three consecutive leagues to four , something that will not be easy to emulate in the short forsee-able future. Its a national challenge for all the coaches and aspiring coaches in Zimbabwe. Even Super Pepe , had to to opt out of star studded Barca than to endure another season to defend La Liga for the third time. This is not a mean achievement and if the panel of judges for the awards could not recognize such a record setting achievement then we have a big problem. We have blind panel of selectors who need preset standards to use , something like a template, otherwise we will not be shocked to see another player of the year coming from mvela league next year. Without taking anything away from good performance of Chaminuka and his team , those awards leaves a lot to be desired and this must be a cause of great concern for stake holders , sponsors and fans. I think sponsors might have to set standards for awards or we might have a parallel award system otherwise leaving custody of football to these journos is a recipe for conspiracy to destroy our football. I hope Pasuwa was not demotivated with such dis-graceful judgement. We need to get facts right , maybe we are wrong and the panel do have their own considerations.Does one win awards for just attempting or you win an award for being victorious?. May we know the full list of the panel of judges involved here.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 02:51:39 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015