The football-loving public takes its hat off to Mamelodi Sundowns for making us all proud South Africans after the team’s unbelievable feat of beating the perennial winners of the Confederation of African Football (Caf) Champions League, Egypt’s Zamalek, on 23 October in their own backyard in Alexandria.
We all say, Halala Masandawana Halala. Halala kabo yellow Halala. Halala Minwana Phezulu Halala. Halala Yellow Machine Halala. Thank you so much for making South Africa the proud nation we are.
Now, as South Africans, we can walk tall knowing that we’re the continental football champions. Today, we are the number one football nation On the continent of Africa. We just hope you can go all out to win the world club championship as well in Japan later in December. We keep our fingers crossed for you.
Now we have two proud clubs, Orlando Pirates back in 1995 and Masandawana today, that have conquered Africa and are the proud bearers of the continental star badge on their jerseys.
Pirates have been back there, in the Champions League, a number of times and at one stage were beaten in the final by another Egyptian giant, Al Ahly, just before Sundowns came into the picture which resulted in their current win. Even Sundowns has been there before, in the finals back in 2001, and were beaten by Al Ahly.
We hope the same winning team of Sundowns can make a quick return to the Champions League in an effort to stamp their authority too, just like the Egyptians have done over many years. Now that they have broken the curse, we can expect many more Champions League cups to come our way, be they from Sundowns, Pirates or any other of our teams.
But there is one thing that bothers me, especially with the Egyptian fans, and Fifa seems powerless to stamp this out – the issue of lasers being used on opponents to blind them. This goes on with impunity, yet Fifa comes and preaches to us about the importance of fair play.
Where is the fair play when spectators, who are supposed to enjoy the beauty of football and allow the best team on the day to win, go out of their way to blind opponents with lasers – and get away with it.
I am addressing Fifa here as the football world controlling body, as I know that Caf is nothing but his master’s voice. Caf has known this Egyptian practice for years and has never lifted a finger. They will tell you that intimidation is part of the game, but as far as I am concerned, this is taking it too far and flies in the face of fair play and infringes on the very foundations of this noble game.
If such dirty tricks are part of the game, then I suggest we also carry AK47s to the stadium and pump them into the air to intimidate players, as long as we don’t shoot any of them or anyone for that matter.
You saw what happened to Wayne Sandilands? He had to use water to try and wash his painful and itchy eyes, and we call this idiotic tendency fair play? Something needs to be done before it’s too late and before everybody starts resorting to all sorts of shenanigans in order to win. And I have to mention Denis Onyango – because that was a straight red card for the player who roughed him up.
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