Friday, July 17, 2009

Zimbabwe, Aiming to be Africa's Peru

Malaysia booked a friendly against England only to have the FA send a Gillingham side to masquerade as the Three Lions.

Substitute 'Zimbabwe' for 'England' and 'Monomotapa' for 'Gillingham' and that's pretty much what happened to Malaysia.

Although you probably have to also swap out "Three Lions" for something. And to be fair to the analogy, nobody would have been able to tell the difference between the English National team and a third division side but yeah, Zimbabwe tried slip all of Malaysia a mickey.

In the scandalous affair, Monomotapa did not only pose as the National team, but also played their two games using the national team’s colours. Now the Football Association of Malaysia is accusing ZIFA of lacking respect and questionable integrity after it was duped into believing Monomotapa were the Zimbabwe national team.
Lacking respect? No shit. This is the same FA whose chief is open about having her way sexually with national team players.

Incidentally, she—Henrietta Rushwaya—is still the head of the country's FA. And she was totally cool with it saying of the Malaysians, "Let them eat crappy club teams."

That's a little cooler than her actual quote, but not much less bizarre as she tapped Monomotapa for the trip after realizing the two-match tilt "would not be of benefit to the Warriors as they do not have any immediate assignments."

So it's not enough for Rushwaya to screw her own players, and now she feels the need to screw over entire countries. This actually corresponds with ZIFA by-laws that are based on the operating tenet of "Eh, if we're not going to get much out of it, let's dick over the other guys."

Rushwaya added a verbal shoulder shrug in sort of defending both the organization and the club: "Whilst it is not right to use the national colours, we cannot stop anyone from using the kit."

This is actually pretty awesome. You and your 10 best friends are now the Zimbabwe national soccer team.

Anyway, Monomotapa lost the first match 4-0 to the 157th-FIFA-ranked Malaysian squad before salvaging some national club pride in a 1-0 victory.

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