Highlanders have gone too far

By Robson Sharuko

Highlanders is an 84-year-old football institution, widely acknowledged as one of the two biggest football clubs in this country, whose appeal cuts across racial and tribal barriers and whose journey in search of greatness – pregnant with both triumph and tragedy – has captured the imagination of millions.

To some of those loyal followers, Bosso is more than just a football club.

It’s an iconic institution that fulfils their dreams and has produced a battery of stars whose talents cheered the spirits of a constituency that has always loved the beautiful game since that landmark day in 1926 when King Lobengula’s grandson Rhodes returned home, from studies at Lovedale Institute in South Africa, and formed Lions Football Club in Makokoba.

From those humble beginnings, rose the phoenix that we call Highlanders today, multiple winners of the domestic championship, a productive nursery that has produced legends like Josiah Nxumalo and Peter Ndlovu and a mean machine which, at the turn of the millennium, evolved into the best football club in the country.

In the first decade, since the turn of the millennium, Bosso have been the dominant football club in this country by winning four league titles, but the irony of it all is that classes of super Highlanders teams, which graced our fields in the ’70s and ’80s, never won the championship, but still left their mark and an archive of lasting memories for their fans.

To their opponents, especially the Dynamos fans, Bosso have always represented the ultimate prize that has to be captured, and subdued, in an endless turf battle for superiority in a fierce fight for the right to win the bragging rights that come with being called the nation’s best football club.

Even when Highlanders were not winning the league championships, and DeMbare dominated the landscape, the sheer size of the Bosso support base, the passion that runs deep among their fans and the blood-and-thunder battles that were fought meant their epic meetings remained the flagship clash of the domestic Premiership.

CAPS United’s evolution from a club that specialised in just winning knockout football tournaments, into a genuine championship-winning team in 1996 and the subsequent success stories of 2004 and 2005 might have added a degree of intensity to their rivalry with Dynamos, but Bosso remained the prized catch.

While DeMbare and Makepekepe’s duels can be defined in the context of a battle for the bragging rights of a city, The Battle of Harare, the Glamour Boys’ clash with Bosso carries a bigger prize and is defined in national context — The Battle of Zimbabwe.

Four years have now passed since Highlanders last won the league championship and, during that period, the balance of power has swung decisively into Harare’s corridors and Dynamos (2007), Monomotapa (2008) and Gunners (2009) took turns to keep the biggest prize, in domestic football, in the capital.

While Bosso were sleeping, the clubs from the capital did not only win the league championships but they also made waves on the continent with Dynamos reaching the semi-finals of the Champions League and Monoz reaching the group stages — something that Highlanders have failed to do every time they plunged into the jungles of African football flying the national flag.

There were four Zimbabwean teams in the Champions League and the Confederations Cup this season, the first time that this country has had such a huge representation on the continent, but Bosso were not part of that cast of clubs which, to rub salt into the wounds of the Highlanders’ loyalists, included lightweights Lengthens.

While little Gunners were preparing for a showdown against mighty Al-Ahly of Egypt in the Champions League, Bosso were bracing for a league match against Douglas Warriors — confined to the domestic adventures by their poor show in the previous season and searching for solutions, in a tough battle to regain greatness, which seemingly couldn’t be picked by their radar.

But even the world’s greatest teams also hit a barren pitch some of the time and their struggles do not necessarily signal the end of their days as a force to be reckoned with. Some things are just meant to be and football throws a number of such scenarios.

While Liverpool have yet to win a league championship in 20 years, it was interesting to hear from Sir Alex Ferguson, going into the league tie at Old Trafford two weeks ago, that the Reds remain Manchester United’s ultimate enemy and the clash remains the flagship fixture of the English Premiership.

While England have never won the World Cup, since a controversial 4-2 triumph in extra-time over Germany at Wembley in 1966, and the Germans have won the title twice and been runners-up a number of times since that day, there is no question that the England/Germany clash remains European football’s flagship fixture.

The two giants met in a 2010 World Cup second round tie in Bloemfontein in June and England were soundly beaten 1-4 by a rampant Germany that went all the way to the semi-finals before settling for third place.

But that fixture will forever be remembered for that goal by Frank Lampard, which clearly crossed the line and should have given the Three Lions a deserved equaliser, had it somehow not been missed by a blundering referee and his assistant.

For all their hooliganism, the English fans didn’t turn Bloemfontein into a battle ground, even when it was clear that fate had conspired to rob their team of a goal and human error had contributed to their World Cup elimination, despite all the pain that came with losing in such cruel fashion to their biggest rivals.

Years of isolation, in the aftermath of the Heysel disaster in Belgium when 39 Italian fans died during crowd trouble torched by English fans at a European Cup final featuring Liverpool and Juventus, had long taught the English the value of sportsmanship.

Until Heysel was turned into a death cage by the rampaging Liverpool hooligans, English fans and their clubs behaved as if they were a law unto themselves and specialised in adding a terror touch to the game that the rest of mainland Europe enjoyed in tranquility.

Because it was a culture that was prevalent at home, and more often than not went unpunished, the hooligans started to believe that it was the way it should be until that dark day in Belgium when the shock of the death of the Italian fans gave the Uefa leadership the courage to stop the nonsense.

For five years, the English clubs were banned from Europe and, isolated from the world, they leant painful lessons and came back a reformed group. Highlanders, just like Liverpool before them, carry a certain responsibility by virtue of their status as a massive football club.

In the pre-Heysel days, the Liverpool fans mistook the size of their club, and the sheer number of the people who supported to the team, as a licence that gave them the freedom to bully everyone who came their way and, if need be, use force to subdue them using their strength in numbers.

One gets a feeling that this is the same syndrome that is affecting the Highlanders fans today, their soul persecuted by their team’s failings on the pitch, that pain compounded by the success of their biggest rivals at home and on the continent and a state of confusion created by a leadership that appears helpless to lead the way during difficult times for this sleeping giant.

Neither is their case being helped by the failure by both the PSL leadership and the Zifa board to take firm decisive action, if not on the trouble causers then on the team that represents its fans, and stop the madness that has turned Barbourfields into a battle zone.

The football leadership’s failure to effectively deal with the hooliganism that is clearly rampant within the Highlanders’ ranks has been one of the glaring shortcomings of the men and women that we put into positions of authority, in sweeping changes in the corridors of power in the domestic game, at the beginning of the year.

From a distance both Zifa and the PSL leaders have watched, helplessly, as the hooligans at Barbourfields assaulted the director of a visiting Premiership team, played a big part in the abandonment of the BancABC Sup8r Cup semi-final and then forced the premature ending of the league match between Dynamos and Bosso on Sunday.

They have watched from their offices, as the Bosso leadership – who should be well versed in the Fifa regulations that outlaw the practice of taking football issues to the courts of law – dragging not only the PSL leadership but even the only sponsor who has cared to stick with a domestic game so short on corporate partners it remains on a life-support system.

Now the BancABC Sup8r Cup remains in limbo and, thanks to this circus, we are certain to hear either this week, or next week, BancABC finally telling us that they have had enough of this madness and will be taking their money to cricket.

Where is the leadership in all this nonsense?

Why are club officials being allowed to behave as if they have turned into some kind of super chiefs, in imaginary kingdoms on Mars, where they are not answerable to anyone? Is this still the same game that banned certain leaders, not so long ago when it was still under firm leadership, simply because they had stepped over the line?

In the English Premiership, Arsene Wenger complains to the referee about time added on in Arsenal’s game against Sunderland and he is hit with an FA charge for bringing the game into disrepute. Here in Zimbabwe, club officials can take matters to court, and hold an entire tournament to ransom, and still no action is taken against them.

Highlanders, without a doubt, are a big club in a big crisis. For the better part of the last four years they have been trying to find a way back to the big time, to be competitive again, to win championships again, to play on the continent again, to woo their fans back to Barbourfields in large numbers.

They are a team at the cross-roads, crippled by a questionable leadership, a questionable technical team, a dwindling support base and a soul that has been torn apart by the sum total of their struggles. But Bosso should not be allowed to drag the entire domestic game into their grave. Their hooligans should not be allowed to turn Barbourfields into a place where nothing but a Bosso victory would be acceptable.

There might have been a number of people who sympathised with their gamesmanship, in trying to get the BancABC Sup8r Cup abandoned, because of DeMbare’s unfortunate antics – to walk away from the field in protest – earlier in the game.

But, after the wild events on Sunday, it’s hard to find those neutrals still singing the Bosso tune. Yes, referees might be at fault here and there, even at the grand stage like the World Cup, but that isn’t a licence for teams and their fans to take the law into their hands.

The time has come for this nonsense to be stopped and the domestic football leadership has to take firm action, with tough measures, or we can finally bury the domestic game – which has been on life-support for some time now – in its grave.