Fam President Walter Nyamilandu last year accused Malawian football fans of the serious charge of treason for having fallen for, nay worshipping, the English Premier League at the expense of the local game.
The irony about his comments, however, is that a few weeks after he uttered those statements, (which, if the truth be told, were spot on), Nyamilandu was captured in one of the newspapers, proudly clad in a Manchester United jersey. If that is not high treason, I don’t know what else it could be.
But Nyamilandu was not spinning a piece of fiction, hypocritical as it may have been. There is a palpable obsession with the English game in Malawi, with bars packing to the rafters every weekend to watch the stars of English Premiership turn on the style.
In contrast, the stadiums in Malawi are not admirably filled, with the spaces in the terraces taken up by a few people, most of whom you suspect pitch up to satisfy a curiosity than the actual need to actually watch the match themselves.
Last Saturday, August 1, Kamuzu Stadium was well filled, even though not to capacity, and I don’t know how much this had to do with the fact that the English Premier League is off-season or that there was a special pull to the teams engaging in the Blantyre derby.
It was the match between age-old archrivals, Bullets FC and MTL Wanderers and to say I came out disappointed after 90 minutes would be trivialising my emotions.
Something is definitely wrong with the game and it has absolutely nothing to do with Malawians infatuation with the English game.
Based on history, Bullets and Wanderers are the best teams in the country by a mile, even though in recent years, Escom United, Silver Strikers, and lately, even Blackpool and Zomba United can stake a claim.
On the evidence of Saturday’s game, however, Bullets and Wanderers gave a poor advertisement of the local game with a lacklustre display of kick-and-rush football, more suited to village football than to the so-called cream of the game in the country.
Even the goal scored by Wanderers failed to add a sparkle to an otherwise intrepid game whose major highlight was not the nomads’ goal but the comical indecisiveness of referee Sam Mangasanja following the goal.
The sheer extent of poor officiation on Saturday was heartbreaking and if we needed evidence about the low levels to which the local game has sunk, that was provided in abundance on Saturday. And that, unfortunately, cannot be blamed on the English game!
A ball-boy, in his innocence, threw onto the pitch a ball just moments before (if you are a Bullets’ fanatic) or moments after (if you are a Nomads diehard) Gerald Chimbaka had put the match ball into the net. Somewhere in between, you suspect, lies the truth, which none of the two teams’ footballers and supporters is ready to accept.
Mangasanja had a mind to allow the Nomads’ goal but so overwhelmed was he by the enormity of his decision which courted a storm of protests from the People’s Team that he had a change of mind and reversed the goal.
But the Nomads would have none of it and the players made as if they were heading out of the pitch in protest at what they perceived as daylight robbery.
Meanwhile, as he oscillated between what should be and what should not have been, down came a high powered entourage from the VIP stand, led by none the mightier than Sulom President Henry Chibowa himself.
That, in my view, was another mistake in the chaotic administration of the local game. True, the tensions were high at this point but they weren’t volatile and it wasn’t a situation which required the intervention of the Sulom president.
By the way, do rules of the game in Malawi require the direct intervention of the Sulom president in the course of the game?
Where I sat, there was a healthy mixture of Bullets and Wanderers supporters who, above everything else, shared one passion: the rivalry between their teams but there was much camaraderie being passed around that, for a moment, one forgot these were sworn enemies. But the Chibowa entourage didn’t give much comfort to the Bullets supporters.
Bullets supporters, among others, have, without couching their emotions in cryptic language, expressed discomfort with the impartiality of both Fam and Sulom, which they perceive as blue.
Nyamilandu, they say, played for Wanderers and was the team’s general secretary at some time. He might have professed his passion for Bullets at some point but it didn’t give any gloss to the suspicions. Chibowa has a similar history with Nyamilandu, bar the declaration of support for the People’s Team.
Hence, any decision, irrespective of its legitimacy, made by Fam and Sulom, especially one that seems to tip in favour of Wanderers, has been viewed with a generous amount of suspicion.
With this background in mind, it was fait accompli for Bullets fans when Mangasanja changed his mind again, not, they suggested, by small measure prodded by the violent indignation with which the Nomads players had responded to his earlier change of mind and the intimidating presence of Chibowa and his entourage, who included match commissioner Charles Kafatia and National Referees Committee chair Moffat Champiti.
Curiously though, as all this drama was taking place, the fourth official was in ‘slumber-land’, not even getting nearer his colleagues in uniform to help them come to a consensus. By the way, what is duty of the fourth official? Is it to run around with the substitutions board?
Enough of the chaotic officiation. Back to the two teams.
None of the two teams, Bullets and Wanderers, has won the TNM Super League in the past two seasons — Escom United having won it in 2007 and Silver Strikers in 2008 — and on the evidence of Saturday’s match, the waiting by the so-called giants of the local game could be much longer.
None played like a champion in waiting. 11 Spanners of Thyolo and Mwanza Medicals could turn up a better game. And, perhaps, with the exception of Nomads’ defender Foster Namwera, none of the players played with any distinction, enough to make it into even Flames Team C.
There was nothing to remind the spectators of the cultured pace the game between two rivals threw up. On the contrary, there was desperation written all over the game, with the Nomads keen to put their recent troubles on the pitch behind them and the Bullets attempting to remind everyone that they are still very much around — albeit in diluted form.
The passing was uncharacteristic of the two teams, with the players resorting to aerial balls. If the players weren’t trying desperately to connect with the ball with their heads, then they made use of legs in karate style — making it look more like a karate fiesta than a football match between two of Malawi’s great teams.
And in a sign of unsettled nerves, within the first twenty minutes of the game, Wanderers mentor Yasin Osman had hauled off Idrissa Walesi for Rafik Mussa and his counterpart, Gilbert Chirwa, was not long in copying him, taking off Rodrick Douglass for Sankhani Nyirenda.
I would be wrong if I said the substitutions had any meaningful impacts, if not just a sign of desperation on the part of the coach — an act to be seen to be doing something than doing nothing at all.
And the Nomads were made to pay dearly for this when an injured Bernard Kalilani played on one leg for twenty minutes or so because the team had made all its substitutions too early.
With the English Premier League set to return in a few days time, last Saturday was an opportune moment for the local league to deliver a statement of intent but it failed spectacularly.
Malawians don’t want to watch the English game just to spite the local game. True, Malawi is far from reaching the heights of the English game but, the least we can do is try — which is everything Bullets and Wanderers, Malawi’s best teams, didn’t do on Saturday.
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