Hooray! Africa's almost out
I have a very strong feeling that I will earn the wrath and cursing of many people today, and my African credentials will be questioned.
But I am mightily pleased that the rubbish from Africa will soon be wiped off the list of contenders at the World Cup, and the sooner the last also-ran is sent packing the better for some of us who enjoy seeing genuine soccer players doing what they do best, rather than a collection of lumbering hulks clearly out of their depth.
And by that I am not exhibiting a "slave mentality", neither am I somehow regretting that colonialism and apartheid have ended.
Rather, I am happy that the wheat will finally be separated from the chaff at the World Cup. I am not "Eurocentric" or "Afro-pessimist"; I am darn irritated by incompetence, and have no good word for it.
First to bite the dust, and thankfully so, was that shameful crook Ismail Bhamjee of the Botswana Soccer Association.
Shady characters
How such a slimy character could have been allowed to worm his way up the sporting ladder to end up in the executive of Fifa is beyond me.
I mean, were the soccer "authorities" in Botswana and other parts of the continent unaware of this man's dubious character before elevating him to the continental body, which then proposed him for Fifa?
Before you say that I am being too hard on Bhamjee, let me remind you that he is widely suspected of having voted against South Africa back in 2000 and so, helped by New Zealander octogenarian Charles Dempsey's infamous abstention, ensured that we did not get to host the spectacle taking place in Germany. Perhaps he made himself a mint on the side out of it, who knows?
This time he was a top-ranked Fifa match commissioner in Frankfurt for this tournament and like other executive members, he had about 12 complimentary tickets courtesy of the world body.
The bum was so stupidly greedy that he was caught red-handed just before an England-Costa Rica game selling the tickets for three times their face value.
Fifa viewed the aberration so seriously that it immediately convened an emergency executive meeting, at which Bhamjee the bum was shown the evidence against him. He had no case to defend, and instead gave a mealy-mouthed crocodile lament which convinced no one. He was kicked out of Germany and thrown out of Fifa.
Lesson in the bum's saga
There is a very good lesson in the bum's saga for our electorate; maybe once the lesson has been learnt, we may stop entrusting incompetents and charlatans with high office, whose only desire for being in the driving seats is corruption and an eye for filthy lucre.
The second load of rubbish from our continent to be thrown out of the World Cup are the teams from Africa and the Caribbean. One team is still offering some token resistance, but I have no doubt that it, too, will soon join the rest on an early flight back home.
The Togo squad proved the stereotype that greed and little else is this continent's biggest product; like Bafana Bafana at this year's Africa Cup of Nations, the Togolese players wanted huge chunks of money before playing. Togo never made it beyond the first round; Bafana Bafana failed to win a single point and never scored a single goal.
The damned sickness of putting money before everything else cost them plenty, not least their own self-respect. Now I am not infected with the stupid "patriotic" fever which gripped the woolly-brained SABC commentators to prophesy, as they so stupidly did at the beginning of this World Cup, that Africa would show the rest of the world a thing or two.
Mind you, I ooze with patriotism but I believe, at the same time, that I can tell if I am being asked to back a dead horse.
As it is, the exciting soccer players in the world right now come mainly from Europe and Latin America, and those are the people I want to watch playing the beautiful game.
I want to watch Wayne Rooney, Juan Roman Riquelme, Frank Lampard, Pauleta, Xavi, Djibril Cisse, Rio Ferdinand, Raul, Luis Figo, Ronaldinho, Thierry Henry, Kaka, Patrick Vieira, Robinho and Cesc Fabregas.
I do not want to watch the likes of Pimpong, Yapi Yapo or Doji Obilale.
And I have no time either for rubbish passed off as "commentary", which is why I now switch off the volume during interval to avoid listening to Auckland Park-based loudmouths waffling their nonsense of useless "expertise" which few people, I would argue, find riveting and illuminating.
With Bhamjee and the bums sullying the image of our soccer, I truly find it worrying that in a little under four years we must stage the best World Cup yet, given that every edition has been better than the preceding one.
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