With referees like these . . .

05 Aug, 2016 - 00:08 0 Views

The ManicaPost

ESTEEMED followers of the game of football, thank you for finding time for interaction.

Local referees have lately been hogging the limelight for the wrong reasons and have come in for a lot of criticism for the way they are handling Castle Lager Premier Soccer League matches, with a lot of clubs crying foul.

Feeling hard done, some coaches, whose teams have ostensibly been on the receiving end have come out with guns blazing — the curt and blunt ones being brutally frank in their admonishing of the men in black.

Portuguese coach Jorge Paulo Silva, during his short stay at Dynamos once ridiculed a referee and told him in his face to find another a job because he was atrociously incompetent at match officiating.

Saul Chaminuka, during his stint as Border Strikers coach, also blew his chimney when he fumed at how the referee, Allan Bhasvi, went about his business when his charges lost 0-2 away to Highlanders, with the Beitbridge-based side briefly storming off the pitch in protest.

“I have a problem with how the match was handled. That wasn’t a penalty. Why are we playing if matches end like this? Referees mustn’t come for games with the results in their pocket to just hand them over,” charged Chaminuka.

Chicken Inn, through their secretary, Tawengwa Hara, also had no kind words for Thomas Masaa, whom they accused of biased officiating when they hosted FC Platinum in a league match.

“What he (the referee) did was not inept refereeing, but someone who was on a mission, who disregarded the laws of the game in order to achieve his mission. He was biased against our team and clearly favoured the team from his home provinces,” Hara wrote to the PSL complaining, and even threatened to take up the matter with football’s supreme body –Fifa.

CAPS United recently also put their concerns over match officials in black and white, lodging a formal complaint with the authorities and seeking a redress.

Mutare City Rovers coach, Taku Shariwa, also had a go at referees, whom he felt have had a contribution to his team’s seemingly long-term and permanent relationship with the relegation reaches.

“There are some silly things beyond your control which affect the outcome of the matches. It seems some match officials have a vendetta against us because last week against Highlanders we scored a genuine goal, but it was disallowed. Now we had most decisions going against us,” disapproved Shariwa of the referees.

Mutare socialite and Zimbabwe Women Football board member competitions Cecilia Gambe once invaded the pitch against the run of play and gestured the middle finger to Brighton Chimene in objection to perceived unfair refereeing against Gusha Bhora when they hosted How Mine at Sakubva in May.

There, however, are some club tacticians who chose to be tacit and diplomatic in taking a snipe at biased match officials. DeMbare gaffer, Lloyd “Samaita” Mutasa is popular for saying he would rather and chooses to only comment on things he has direct control over and, therefore, can change – like his own team’s performance –than laying into referees. But his tone, though, always ‘betray a man simmering with bitterness deep down inside.

It is clear, nonetheless, that several clubs have issues with the centre men and it is time they are called to order and shown the yellow or even red card.

Virtually every team in the league has had an axe to grind with referees at some point during this campaign and surely all these teams can’t be crybabies or bad losers.

Their cases certainly have substance and hold water.

Match officials have the role to uphold and promote the tenets of the Fifa-vaunted Fail Play and not to determine the outcomes of games. Bias against one team or favouring the other dilutes the spirit of fairness and sportsmanship and its values, while also defeating the whole purpose of competition.

It just punctures impartiality.

Match officials are human, too, and they err, yes, but sit becomes disturbing when their “mistakes” are always recurring. They just can’t or shouldn’t have their performances be that error-riddled throughout matches or spanning over the entire campaign.

It is tragic, in the crude sense of the word, when referees’ blunders cost an opponent at the expense of the other.

To be biased during umpiring in a game is to kill the essence of any sport.

Are we now having unpleasant situation of the men in black coming to the stadia to handle matches wearing their favourite team’s replica jerseys under their uniforms as vests?

Is it that football officiating has gone to the dogs or it is that the dogs have come to football officiating?

Biased match-officials have no place in the game and are actually a cancer that festers our football.

Little wonder then why Zimbabwean referees were overlooked after none was appointed to officiate at the Cosafa Under 17 championships which ran from July 22-31 in Mauritius.

Plunging to low depths, Ruzive Ruzive embarrassed the nation when he was expelled from the Cosafa Cup tournament in South Africa in 2015 following a poor show with the whistle that stirred controversy.

Come on, Mighty Warriors

Zimbabwe’s senior women’s team are in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil doing battle in the Olympics.

Shadreck Mlauzi and his troops, in their maiden appearance at the Games, are out to fly the country’s flag high as they seek to secure a berth in the quarter-finals as one of the two top team in the group or as one of the two best-placed teams in each of the three groups with four teams each.

The Mighty Warriors are in Group F, together with Germany, Canada and Australia.

Friday Football Echoes would like to echo President Mugabe’s sentiments during a send-off ceremony for Team Zimbabwe at State House before their departure for Brazil: “We join them as out ambassadors in sport, to be beacons and role models to the whole nation, for the whole nation in general, and to our youth in particular . . . And as we expect the very good results we all say “Go! Go! Go! Team Zimbabwe! The whole nation is behind you . . . To us you are our heroes and heroines.”

Mighty Warriors’ remaining fixtures:

Vs Canada (Saturday, August 6)

Vs Australia (Tuesday, August 9)

The EPL is upon us

The English Premier League 2016-17 season is only some days away many a football enthusiast are looking forward to it with great relish. Easily the most followed and widely watched league in the world, it is already generating and it’s already generating wild excitement and expectation. With Jose Mourinho, Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp, Arsene Wenger, Claudio Ranieri, Mauricio Pochettino, Slaven Billic and Ronald Koeman set it to slug it out for top honours in the battle for supremacy, it promises lots of spills and thrills both on and off the pitch.

With Gamechanger’s beating to only Liverpool, the Reds go again and are dreaming because they never walk alone!

It’s Game On, Play On!

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